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— its posture. And so it required messengers, who fixed a determined form for it, called it prayer, and gave it specific times, specific words, a specific manner, and a specific orientation.
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Another example: reason forbids adultery, but it does not specify how a woman becomes guarded to a man so as to become his protected spouse — whether by words alone, or by property alone, or by her consent and her father's consent alone.
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The messengers came with a bride-payment, a written document, and two witnesses. Another example: reason condemns theft, but it does not specify how a person acquires property so as to make it truly his.
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Whether through craft, through commerce, through inheritance, or through permitted means such as hunting on land and at sea —
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Another example: making the transgressor pay for his crime. Reason sees that every criminal should be made to pay for his crime, but does not specify the form of that payment — whether by rebuke alone, or insult added, or physical chastisement as well.
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The messengers came with a precise penalty for every crime, combined some penalties with others in certain circumstances, and assigned monetary fines to some.
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For these matters I have enumerated, and their like, we are compelled to rely on the messengers' mission — for if we were left to our own opinions, our intentions would diverge and we would agree on nothing.
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Section 4. Having explained why the sending of messengers was necessary, I should follow that with an account of how their mission was validated before people.
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I say: since people know their own strength and capacity — that they cannot overcome natural laws or overturn perceptible realities —
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— they are powerless before such things, for these are the acts of your Creator, who brought together the conflicting natures and created them combined, though their character is to repel each other —
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— these must therefore be for them a sign of the Creator's act. So whichever messenger the Creator chose for His mission, He arranged that he be given a sign from among these signs.
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Either overcoming a natural law — such as preventing fire from burning, arresting water from flowing, halting the celestial sphere from its motion, and the like —
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When such a sign is given to a messenger, everyone who witnesses it is obligated to honor and believe him in what he tells them — for the Wise One bestows His sign only upon one whom He trusts.