First phrase:

There is no god but God. This affirms God’s Oneness in His Divinity and His being the Sole Object of Worship. The following is a very strong proof of the Divine Unity at this level.

The universe, and especially Earth’s surface, display a most orderly activity. We observe a most wise creativity and a most systematic unfolding, for everything is given the most proper shape and form. We also witness a most affectionate, generous, and merciful provision and bountifulness. Such factors display the necessary Existence and Oneness of an Active, Creative, Opening, Shaping, and Bestowing One of Majesty.

The continual decay and renewal of all existents show that they manifest an All-Powerful Maker’s sacred Names and reflect Its lights; are works of that Maker’s creative activity, and inscriptions of the Pen of His Destiny and Power; and are mirrors reflecting His Perfection’s grace.

Just as the universe’s Owner proves this greatest truth and most exalted degree of His Oneness’ manifestation through all the Scriptures and holy Pages He revealed, all people of truth and perfection prove this same degree through their investigations and spiritual discoveries. Creation also points to this by displaying miracles of artistry, wonders of power, and treasuries of wealth despite its helplessness and poverty. Those who deny that Single One of Unity must accept innumerable deities or, like the Sophists, deny both their own existence and that of the universe.[1]

[1] Particularly in the eyes of Plato, anyone who looks for the truth in phenomena alone, whether he interprets it subjectively or relativistically, cannot hope to find it there; and his persistence in turning away from the right direction virtually amounts to a rejection of philosophy and of the search for truth. Many a subsequent thinker for whom metaphysics, or the investigation of the deepest nature of reality, was the crowning achievement of philosophy has felt with Plato that the Sophists were so antimetaphysical that they have no claim to rank as philosophers. But in a period when, for many philosophers, metaphysics is no longer the most important part of philosophy and is even for some no part at all, there is growing appreciation of a number of problems and doctrines recurring in the discussions of the Sophists in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. In the 18th and early 19th centuries the Sophists were considered charlatans. Their intellectual honesty was impugned, and their doctrines were blamed for weakening the moral fibre of Greece. The charge was based on two contentions, both correct: first, that many of the Sophists attacked the traditionally accepted moral code; and second, that they explored and even commended alternative approaches to morality that would condone or allow behavior of a kind inadmissible under the stricter traditional code. (Ed.)