Excerpt From Bahā’-al-Dīn's Epistle Entitled Christianity

Origins of the Druze People and Religion, by Philip K. Hitti, [1924], at sacred-texts.com

p. 68

APPENDIX E

EXCERPT FROM BAHĀ’-AL-DĪN'S EPISTLE ENTITLED CHRISTIANITY

My trust I put in our lord the Ḥakīm-God who is above number and child, and my thanks I offer to his servant, the only Messiah [Ḥamzah]. From the eloquent servant, ¹ the slave of our lord the guide and Messiah, to all those who seek rapprochement to the deity through the reality of the Eucharist and who, of all people of truth, hold fast to the belief in it [i.e., the Eucharist] be they priest, bishop or patriarch. Peace be upon the people who profess Unity, who walk in the footsteps of the holy apostles, who know the creed of the trusted, truthful saints whose souls are pure, who are steadfast in their loyalty to the Lord according to the covenant they made with him pledging their own souls, and who offer their lives in the love of the loyal one, the high priest, the martyr of martyrs, John the Evangelist, who sustained for the sake of his Lord insult, slaughter and beheadedness! ²

One of the strangest things of the age is how these people have forgotten the fundamentals of their religion, followed what has been forbidden them regarding loyalty to Iblīs and Satan, confessed by themselves the practice of what according to their own books of worship is false and untrue, agreed among themselves to follow evil and iniquity, and have become widely known among the people of truth, near and far, for their wicked beliefs.

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Where is then your loyalty to the Lord, O you assembly of hypocrites, ¹ and where is your acceptance of his commandments, O liars, if you believe in him and trust in his return for the salvation of the people of truth from their sins? Did he not command you in the third chapter of the Gospel of Matthew saying: "Love your enemies, bless them who curse you, do good to them who do evil to you, pray for them who drive you away by force and chase you out haughtily and arrogantly; so that you may become children to your father who is in the heavens, who makes his sun to shine upon the good and the evil, and his rain to fall upon the righteous and the wicked? For if you love those who love you, what reward or credit should be given you? Even the Pharisees may do this very thing itself." ²

O you stiff-necked and stupid ones, the remnant of idol worshipers! You have neither accepted him who gave you his commandment, recognized and remembered the one who announced to you beforehand his coming and directed his grace toward you, nor heard and obeyed his command.

O liars! You rather have violated the covenant of his command, you assembly of hypocrites, and disobeyed the word of the Lord who forbade you to obey satans. In this, you traitors, you have followed the example of the rebellious Jews who killed and scared the prophets. Likewise you have perpetrated evil and mischief against those who announced the coming of the lord Messiah, and practiced polytheism and real atheism which he forbade. You then persecuted the apostles and among them the learned one—the faithful and truthful sheikh—and in so doing you have deviated from the straight path, and forsaken the laws of the people of reality and of true religion, following the example of the priests and chiefs of the Jews in

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their dealing with the worshipful and kneeling Christians and in their rise to repel by unbelief and apostasy the word of the Lord after it had appeared.

Your case, you vicious ones, from the standpoint of deafness, imbecility and blindness, is similar to the case of a dumb animal, which, seeing by its side a man sympathizing with it because of some harm that has befallen it, gives him a painful kick that makes it impossible for him to administer the good he meant to administer to it. Such is your case, you who are too deaf to hear the truth and who refuse to accept the parables of the true Messiah.

Look, you heedless, but whence are you to get the right eye? And understand, but how are you to understand these parables extracted from the clear mines of truth? In the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, he said to the people: "Verily I say to you, the taxgatherers and hypocrites shall get into the kingdom of heaven before you, because John brought you the path of the Lord and of justice, and you did not believe him, although you saw him with your very eyes." You did not repent for what you had done, and did not believe in what you saw. You neither accepted the sermon of this clear wisdom nor respected the right of those who relate themselves to the Christian nation.

Footnotes

68:1 I. e. Bahā’-al-Dīn, the writer of this epistle.

68:2 Bahā’-al-Dīn, who may have been a Christian apostate, confuses here John the Evangelist with John the Baptist, and in another place with John Chrysostom.

69:1 In the preceding Epistle to Constantine, Bahā’-al-Dīn addresses the Christians as "assembly of saints," because he was then still hopeful of winning them to the Druze religion.

69:2 Cf. Matthew 5: 44-47.