Likewise, in this day, thou hast heard the people impute similar charges to this Revelation, saying:  “He hath compiled these words from the words of old;” or “these words are spurious.”  Vain and haughty are their sayings, low their estate and station!

After the denials and denunciations which they uttered, and unto which We have referred, they protested saying:  “No independent Prophet, according to our Scriptures, should arise after Moses and Jesus to abolish the Law of divine Revelation.  Nay, he that is to be made manifest must needs fulfil the Law.”  Thereupon this verse, indicative of all the divine themes, and testifying to the truth that the flow of the grace of the All-Merciful can never cease, was revealed:  “And Joseph came to you aforetime with clear tokens, but ye ceased not to doubt of the message with which He came to you, until, when He died, ye said, ’God will by no means raise up a Messenger after Him.’  Thus God misleadeth him who is the transgressor the doubter."(164) Therefore, understand from this verse and know of a certainty that the people in every age, clinging to a verse of the Book, have uttered such vain and absurd sayings, contending that no Prophet should again be made manifest to the world.  Even as the Christian divines who, holding fast to the verse of the Gospel to which We have already referred, have sought to explain that the law of the Gospel shall at no time be annulled, and that no independent Prophet shall again be made manifest, unless He confirmeth the law of the Gospel.  Most of the people have become afflicted with the same spiritual disease.

Even as thou dost witness how the people of the Qur’an, like unto the people of old, have allowed the words “Seal of the Prophets” to veil their eyes.  And yet, they themselves testify to this verse:  “None knoweth the interpretation thereof but God and they that are well-grounded in knowledge."(165) And when He Who is well-grounded in all knowledge, He Who is the Mother, the Soul, the Secret, and the Essence thereof, revealeth that which is the least contrary to their desire, they bitterly oppose Him and shamelessly deny Him.  These thou hast already heard and witnessed.  Such deeds and words have been solely instigated by leaders of religion, they that worship no God but their own desire, who bear allegiance to naught but gold, who are wrapt in the densest veils of learning, and who, enmeshed by its obscurities, are lost in the wilds of error.  Even as the Lord of being hath explicitly declared:  “What thinkest thou?  He who hath made a God of his passions, and whom God causeth to err through a knowledge, and whose ears and whose heart He hath sealed up, and over whose sight He hath cast a veil—­who, after his rejection by God, shall guide such a one?  Will ye not then be warned?"(166)