Then, He spared you the grief by [granting you] security and casting sleep upon the truthful party and not the [party of the] hypocrites, whose own souls distressed them, not the soul of the Messenger, nor indeed those who manifested an indication [that they were deserving] of [God's] pardon; those for whom it had been appointed that they be slain would have sallied forth to the places where they were to lie, because of His statement No affliction befalls in the earth or in your souls but it is in a Book, before We bring it about [Q. 57:22], that God might try what was in your breasts, in other words, so that God might test what is in your preparedness of [the potential] truthfulness, sincerity, certainty, patience, trust in God, and disengagement, and all the other [virtuous] traits and stations, in order to bring them forth from potentiality to actuality; and that He might prove what was in your hearts, meaning, so that He might deliver those [potentials], which have sallied forth out of the hiding place of the breast and into the storehouse of the heart, from the stumbling blocks that are the evil whisperings of Satan, base states and the passing inclinations of the soul…For the trial is one of God's scourges by which He drives His servants towards Him by purifying them of the attributes of the soul and making manifest the perfections [dormant] in them so that they are devoted completely to Him instead of creatures and to the Truth instead of the soul. That is why it has always been the prophets, followed by the friends [of God], and then the most exemplary [of servants] that have been charged with such [trials]. The Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, as an illustration of his excellence said, 'No prophet has suffered hurt to the extent that I have'. It is as though he were saying, 'No prophet has been purified like I have'. Good are the words of the one who said:
'How excellent are calamities, for verily they bring rust to the ignoble, but lustre to the free'.
For whatever manifests on either of the two [of rust or lustre] is only what is hidden in that person's preparedness, in the same way that they say, 'At the test a man is either honoured or disgraced'.