[He it is Who revealed to you the Book] wherein are verses [that are] clear, above that they should be susceptible to polyvalence or ambiguity, supporting only one meaning, forming the Mother, that is, the original, Book, and others ambiguous, supporting two or more meanings and in whose case truth and falsehood are ambiguous. That is because the Truth, exalted be He, has one face which is the absolute abiding face after the annihilation of creation and which does not allow for multiplicity or plurality. He also has multiple additional faces, a plurality in accordance with the mirrors of the loci of manifestation, and these [faces] are what become manifest of that one face according to the preparedness of each locus of manifestation, in these [faces] truth can become enmeshed in falsehood. The revelation came in this manner so that the ambiguous [verses] turn towards the faces of the many forms of preparedness and thus every one attaches to that which is appropriate to it and the testing and trial become manifest. As for the verifying gnostics who know the abiding face in whatever form or figure it may take, they know the true face from the faces conveyed by the ambiguous verses and so they refer these back to the clear [unambiguous] verses, exemplifying the saying of the poet:
'The face is but one, except that if you were to number its virtues, they [the faces] seem to be many'
As for, the veiled, those in whose hearts is deviation, from the truth, they follow the ambiguous part, because of their veiling themselves from the unity by multiplicity - whereas the verifiers follow the clear part and make the ambiguous follow [from] it - [and because of] their choosing thus from the many potential senses that which is suits their religion and their school, desiring sedition, that is, seeking to be misguided and to misguide, that being the very path which they follow, and desiring its interpretation, according to what suits their situation and their method: 'If the knife is skewed, it will skew its scabbard'. And so just as they do not know the abiding face among the [many] faces, it is necessarily the case that they do not know the true meaning from among the [various] meanings. Thus their veil increases and becomes denser so that they might merit thereby [God's] chastisement; and none knows its interpretation except God and those firmly rooted in knowledge: those who possess knowledge [are able to] know through His knowledge, that is to say, God knows it [all] as a totality and in differentiated mode. They say, 'We believe in it: they affirm God's knowledge through it, as they have knowledge through the light of faith; it is all from our Lord', because for them 'all' has the meaning of 'one' without difference; yet none remembers, that one knowledge differentiated into multiple ambiguous detail, except those whose intellects have become pure by the light of guidance and have become disengaged from the rind of caprice and habit.