The line of attack shows the subtilty and skill of our adversaries. The
Mujtahid, in his letter to Pfander, assumes that the turning-point between us
is the doctrine of the Trinity. Rather, the turning-point is the genuineness
and integrity of our Scriptures; when that is proved, the truth of the
Christian religion and falsity of Mohammedanism follow quite independently of
the Trinity or any other Christian doctrine. These form, indeed, valuable
subsidiary points, for they prove the Coran to oppose previous revelation, but
they are all involved in the soundness of the Scriptures; and till this is
proved on our side, or disproved on that of the Moslems, the arguments must
remain incomplete and unsatisfactory. To have rendered the present attack in
any degree a fair one, the author was bound either to have acknowledged the
genuineness of the Bible, or proved its corruption; instead, he passes over
the Mizân with the sneer that its arguments had been formerly refuted, and
that it might more aptly have been called the Mizâm i Bátil,1
and proceeds to analyse and discuss the contents of the Miftâh-ul-Asrâr.
He is thus enabled to take up at pleasure the most profound and mysterious
doctrines of Revelation; he appeals to reason to attest their impossibility,
and hence he deduces the corruption of our Scriptures. Further, he denies that
the Scriptures, even as they stand, contain the disputed