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Condemning specifically the world's ecclesiastical leaders, He has written: "The source and origin of tyranny have been the divines... God, verily, is clear of them, and We, too, are clear of them." "When We observed carefully," He openly affirms, "We discovered that Our enemies are, for the most part, the divines." "O concourse of divines!" He thus addresses them, "Ye shall not henceforth behold yourselves possessed of any power, inasmuch as We have seized it from you..." "Had ye believed in God when He revealed Himself," He explains, "the people would not have turned aside from Him, nor would the things ye witness today have befallen Us." "They," referring more specifically to Muslim ecclesiastics, He asserts, "rose up against Us with such cruelty as hath sapped the strength of Islam..." "The divines of Persia," He affirms, "committed that which no people amongst the peoples of the world hath committed." And again: "...The divines of Persia ... have perpetrated what the Jews have not perpetrated during the Revelation of Him Who is the Spirit (Jesus)." And finally, these portentous prophecies: "Because of you the people were abased, and the banner of Islam was hauled down, and its mighty throne subverted." "Erelong will all that ye possess perish, and your glory be turned into the most wretched abasement, and ye shall behold the punishment for what ye have wrought..." "Erelong," the Bab Himself, even more openly prophesies, "We will, in very truth, torment such as waged war against Husayn (Imam Husayn) ... with the most afflictive torment..." "Erelong will God wreak His vengeance upon them, at the time of Our return, and He hath, in very truth, prepared for them, in the world to come, a severe torment." (231:1) Nor should, in a review of this nature, reference be omitted to those princes, ministers and ecclesiastics who have individually been responsible for the afflictive trials which Baha'u'llah and His followers have suffered. Fu'ad Pasha, the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs, denounced by Him as the "instigator" of His banishment to the Most Great Prison, who had so assiduously striven with his colleague Ali Pasha, to excite the fears and suspicions of a despot already predisposed against the Faith and its Leader, was, about a year after he had succeeded in executing his design, struck down, while on a trip to Paris, by the avenging rod of God, and died at Nice (1869). Ali Pasha, the Sadr- i- A'zam (Prime Minister), denounced in such forceful language in the Lawh- i- Ra'is, whose downfall the Lawh- i- Fu'ad had unmistakably predicted, was, a few years after Baha'u'llah's banishment to Akka, dismissed from office, was shorn of all power, and sank into complete oblivion. The tyrannical Prince Mas'ud Mirza, the Zillu's- Sultan, Nasiri'd- Din Shah's eldest son and ruler over more than two- fifths of his kingdom, stigmatized by Baha'u'llah as "the Infernal Tree," fell into disgrace, was deprived of all his governorships, except that of Isfahan, and lost all chances of future eminence or promotion. The rapacious Prince Jalalu'd- Dawlih, branded by the Supreme Pen as "the tyrant of Yazd," was, about a year after the iniquities he had perpetrated, deprived of his post, recalled to Tihran, and forced to return a part of the property he had stolen from his victims.
(231:2)
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