﴿ ۞ وَلَوْ يُعَجِّلُ ٱللَّهُ لِلنَّاسِ ٱلشَّرَّ ٱسْتِعْجَالَهُم بِٱلْخَيْرِ لَقُضِىَ إِلَيْهِمْ أَجَلُهُمْ ۖ فَنَذَرُ ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يَرْجُونَ لِقَآءَنَا فِى طُغْيَٰنِهِمْ يَعْمَهُونَ ﴾

“NOW IF GOD were to hasten for human beings the ill [which they deserve by their sinning] in the same manner as they [themselves] would hasten [the coming to them of what they consider to be] good, their end would indeed come forthwith! But We leave them alone [for a while] -all those who do not believe that they are destined to meet Us: [We leave them alone] in their overweening arrogance, blindly stumbling to and fro.”

And if God should hasten for mankind evil, to the end of this [verse]: since preparednesses were created as naturally disposed (mafṭūra) to relative good, whether formal or supra-sensory, in the measure commensurate with their degrees from pre-eternity, then every supplication such [a preparedness] makes and [every] request for good, by the configuration of its receptivity and its purification and yearning for that [good], necessarily brings about the actualisation of that [good] for it promptly and its being effused upon him from the Effusing Principle who is the source of good things and blessings, as He says: And He grants you of all that you ask of Him [Q. 14:34]. Every time that good is effused upon him by virtue of his meriting it because of the existence of purification and cleansing, his preparedness increases by the joining of that good to him, becoming thus stronger and more receptive than the former, and so the Principle, exalted be He, is quicker to respond to him and more effusing upon him. Accordingly with the increase in preparedness comes the increase in effusion until it reaches its [full] extent, which is the significance of 'the doubling of good deeds' and the significance of His words: whoever brings a good deed shall have better than it [Q. 28:84]. As for evil things, these are nothing but the veils of preparedness and the impediments to receptivity and the barriers to effusion. When these [evils] are actualised, what takes place because of them is simply the non-receptivity for good things, whereby they are prevented from the effusion of these [good things] and the preparedness remains as the veil constituting what has been actualised by that [evil] and nothing else. If, in accordance with correspondence, that [preparedness] entails the effusion of evil, then there is nothing in the effusion of the Principle that corresponds to that [evil effusion] and so nothing is effused upon the latter from Its genus, and this is the significance of His words: and whoever brings an evil deed shall only be requited the like of it [Q. 6:160], unless, perhaps, if he has gone to excess and transgressed the bounds of mercy, eliminating [his] preparedness totally, thereby corresponding to devilry and drawing upon its world, as He says: Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descendḍ They descend upon every sinful liar [Q.