19 – Yahya ibn ʿAmmar said in his epistle: “We and our leaders from among the People of Hadith”—he named a number of the imams, together with those before them from the Companions and those who came after—“hold it unlawful for any one of us, earlier or later, to presume or intentionally put forward a statement of his own regarding the divine attributes, the interpretation of the Book of Allah, the meanings of the hadith of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, or to add to or subtract from the wording of the texts. We do not go to extremes, we do not anthropomorphise, and we do not exceed what is found in the Book and the sunnah.”

20 – Imam Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Khuzaymah said: “The reports concerning the attributes of Allah are fully concordant with the Book of Allah. Successive generations have transmitted them from their predecessors, century after century, beginning with the Companions and the Followers down to our own time, as a means of affirming Allah’s attributes, gaining knowledge of Him, believing in Him, and submitting to what Allah, exalted is He, has disclosed in His Revelation and what His Messenger ﷺ has conveyed from His Book—while avoiding taʾwīl (figurative reinterpretation) and denial, and refraining from tamthīl (likening Allah to creation) and takyīf (inquiring about how).”

21 – Abu Bakr ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad reported to us; Abu Bakr al-Tarīthīthī, by authorization, informed us; Abu al-Qasim Hibat Allah informed us; Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn ʿUbayd informed us; Muhammad ibn al-Hasan informed us; Ahmad ibn Zuhayr narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Wahhab ibn Najdah al-Huti narrated to us; Baqiyyah narrated to us; al-Awzaʿi said: “Al-Zuhrī and Makḥul used to say, ‘Let these hadiths pass just as they have come.’”