'The History of Persia, from the most early period to the present time: containing an account of the religion, government, usages and character of the inhabitants of that kingdom. By Colonel Sir John Malcolm, KCB, KLS Late minister plenipotentiary to the court of Persia from the supreme government of India. In two volumes.' [‎415] (456/786)

THE HISTORY OF PERSIA.
415
was necessary to the support of the state, and that nothing could be chap. xxii.
more dangerous than the progress of a spirit of infidelity, which, by
unsettling men's minds, was calculated to throw them into a state of
doubt and ferment. The principal Sooffee teachers, they admitted,
might act from different motives : some might be the deluded dupes
of their own imagination, while others sought only to delude their
followers: but the tenets and the rhapsodies of all tended to the
same point; they desired first to abolish the forms of religion, that
they might with more ease destroy the substance; they pretended
that in their own contemplation they allowed no name, not even that
of the Prophet Mahomed, to come between them and their God;
but with the very breath that they uttered this sentence they desired
to come between God and all other men. The SoofFee teachers,
they said, endeavoured to destroy names to which men gave reve
rence, with no other object but that of substituting their own :
for the first and fundamental tenet of SoofFeeism inculcated, that
the profane or erring could not advance a step without a spiritual
guide, and that their progress in the true path would be exactly
in proportion to their confidence in their holy instructor. What
was this, the Mahomedan priests asked, but a desire of becoming
the idols* of men's worship; and it could be, they argued, of little
consequence to a country, which their bigotry or ambition had
thrown into confusion, whether the men by whom this was effected
♦ The Moorteza Shahee, who are a sect of SoofFees, make an image of their
teacher in clay, which the disciple keeps, to prevent him from wandering, and to bring
him, through continual contemplation, to complete identity with his guide or saint.
Persian MS.