312—Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn al-‘Abbas informed us: ‘Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Baghawi informed us. He said: Muhammad ibn Humayd narrated to us; he said: Ibn al-Mubarak narrated to us; he said: Ma‘mar informed us, from Yazid al-‘Uqayli or someone else, from Mutarrif ibn al-Shikhkhir, who said:

“If all these erroneous doctrines were but a single doctrine, one might say, ‘The truth lies within it.’ But when they branched out and differed, every person of sound reason recognized that the truth does not divide.”