"But I engaged not to remove her from her native place."
"Engagements are binding."
"Judge then between us."
"I have already done so."
"And against whom have you given it?"
"Against your mother's son."
"On whose evidence?"
"On the evidence of your maternal aunt's sister's son."
I find a similar quality—not un-Johnsonian—in the reply of At-Tirmidi the juriconsult to a question, as reported by Abu 't-Taiyib Ahmad Ibn Othman As-Simsar. "I was," said he, "at Abu Jaafar At-Tirmidi's when a person consulted him about the saying of the Prophet, that God descended to the heaven of the world (i.e. the lowest of the seven heavens). This person expressed his desire to know how there could, in that case, be anything more exalted than the lowest heaven?
"At-Tirmidi replied: 'The descent is intelligible; the manner how is unknown; the belief therein is obligatory; and the asking about it is a blameable innovation.'"