But if they answer that God is its world, then I say that God is eternal and His creatures are non-eternal: it is impossible that the eternal should be commingled with the non-eternal or made one with it, or become immanent in it, or that the non-eternal should be the place of the eternal or that the eternal should carry it; for whatever is joined to anything must be like that to which it is joined, and only homogeneous things are capable of being united and separated. And if they say that the spirit does not stand by itself, but by something else, then it must be either an attribute (_ṣifat_) or an accident (_`araḍ_). If it is an accident, it must either be in a _locus_ or not. If it is in a _locus_, its _locus_ must be like itself, and neither can be called eternal; and to say that it has no _locus_ is absurd, for an accident cannot stand by itself. If, again, they say that the spirit is an eternal attribute—and this is the doctrine of the Ḥulúhs and those who believe in metempsychosis (_tanásukhiyán_)—and call it an attribute of God, I reply that an eternal attribute of God cannot possibly become an attribute of His creatures; for, if His life could become the life of His creatures, similarly His power could become their power; and inasmuch as an attribute stands by its object, how can an eternal attribute stand by a non-eternal object? Therefore, as I have shown, the eternal has no connexion with the non-eternal, and the doctrine of the heretics who affirm this is false. The spirit is created and is under God’s command. Anyone who holds another belief is in flagrant error and cannot distinguish what is non-eternal from what is eternal. No saint, if his saintship be sound, can possibly be ignorant of the attributes of God. I give praise without end to God, who hath guarded us from heresies and dangers, and hath bestowed on us intelligence to examine and refute them by our arguments, and hath given us faith in order that we may know Him. When men who see only the exterior hear stories of this kind from theologians, they imagine that this is the doctrine of all aspirants to Ṣúfiism. They are grossly mistaken and utterly deceived, and the consequence is that they are blinded to the beauty of our mystic knowledge and to the loveliness of Divine saintship and to the flashes of spiritual illumination, because eminent Ṣúfís regard popular applause and popular censure with equal indifference. SECTION.