As for this, he asserted it definitively in a matter that does not admit opinion, but rather in creed and the unseen wherein there is no Ijtihad. And the least of its states is that its ruling from the hadith perspective is that of a Mursal report, which the one who transmits it as Mursal uses as evidence. So ponder these lines well, and do not fall into what some in our time fall into of attributing ignorance and heedlessness to the Predecessors, while the tongue of their state is the tongue of the statement of some of the Jahmī sect: "The Predecessors were safer, but we are more knowledgeable and wiser; they were men, and we are men!" This is a great principle that few realize, and many of the people of the Sunna have mentioned it, among them Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya May Allah have mercy on him, for he frequently adduces as evidence the statements of the Companions May God be pleased with them and the Successors in many theological and practical issues. Among that is his statement in his book Bayān Talbīs al-Jahmiyya (6/443-445), where he says while speaking about ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ May Allah have mercy on him transmitting the hadith of the Image as a Mursal report; he said: "Even if it were presumed that ʿAṭāʾ only mentioned it as a Mursal report from the Prophet Peace and blessings of God be upon him, it is well known that ʿAṭāʾ is among the most eminent of the Successors in stature, for he, Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab, Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī, and al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī were the Imams of the Successors in their time. The compiler of this hadith, such as Ibn Khuzayma, has mentioned that reports in this kind of category which necessitate knowledge are greater than the reports which necessitate action. It is well known that if someone like ʿAṭāʾ were to issue a fatwa in an issue of jurisprudence based on a report he transmitted as Mursal, that would entail its establishment with him, and for this reason, the jurists consider the transmitter of a Mursal report using the report he transmitted as Mursal as evidence to be a proof of its establishment with him. So if ʿAṭāʾ asserted this lofty report definitively from the Prophet Peace and blessings of God be upon him in such a great chapter, would he permit that without it being established with him, such that he might have heard it from an unknown person who is not recognized, or a liar, or someone with bad memory?!" End quote. As for what some of the ignorant wrote in the margin of the book Ijtimāʿ al-Juyūsh that the report of al-Shaʿbī is from the Israelite traditions. Then this is of the same kind of attributing heedlessness to the Predecessors: — ʿUmar, and ʿAbdullāh b. Masʿūd May God be pleased with them both, and al-Shaʿbī May Allah have mercy on him, and others among the narrators of the hadith of the creaking — and accusing them of bad creed even regarding God Almighty, and that they do not understand the difference between what is permissible and what is not permissible to narrate from the reports of those before us!