And if a good thing befalls them, they say, 'This is from God', to the end [of the verse]: proving that they are Qadarites, since they ascribe good to God and evil to man, imitating Magians in affirming independent efficient causes in existence and ascribing evil to the Messenger but not to themselves, since he was the one who sent them forth [to battle] and who incited them to [suffer] the evil that they encounter because of him. Thus the Messenger is commanded to call them to the belief in the unity of acts and the denial of efficient cause on the part of others and to the affirmation that He is the agent of good and evil by His words Say, 'Everything is from God'. What is wrong with this people that they do not understand?, because of their being veiled by the attributes of [their] souls and [by] the failure of the hearing of their hearts which are the vessels for audition and understanding. Then it is made clear that God is bounteous and just by the fact that good things and perfections are all out of His bounty, and that evil things are from His justness. In other words, He decrees them for us and afflicts us with them because of a preparedness and a meriting [of that] in us that requires it be so. That meriting occurs by the soul's manifesting of itself in its attributes and its commission of acts of disobedience and sins that necessitate punishment and not because of any other act, as when they attributed the evil that befell them to the Messenger. For the meriting [of such evil] is dependent on the preparedness [of that individual], such that what is entailed by the preparedness of one person does not interfere with another, just as God says And no burdened soul shall bear the burden of another [burdened soul] [Q. 6:164]. Thus He has shown them to be liars in their ascription to … by proving that the efficient cause for [both] good and evil is none other than God alone as required by His bounty and justice. As for the receptive cause, even if in reality that is also from Him, the receptivity for good relates to the original preparedness [of an individual], that derives from the holiest effusion on which our acts and choices have no bearing. Receptivity of evil derives from the preparedness temporally created by the soul's manifesting itself in its attributes and acts, which veil the heart and tarnish its substance such that it needs to be polished by means of calamities, afflictions, trials and misfortunes, and does not derive from the part of the Messenger or anyone else.