Illness is not accepted by souls, unlike death. The virtuous, wise, and knowledgeable people seek death to get rid of this imprisonment, and the prophets ask for it to meet God, which it entails, and so do the people of God. Therefore, no prophet is best at death except that he chooses it because it is the meeting with God, and it is a blessing from Him and a favor, and illness is a preoccupation for him. Performing what God has enjoined on the servant to perform is God’s rights, because he feels pain while he is in the place of obligation, and only the animal spirit feels pain, which distracts the spirit managing his body from what he is called to do in this world. For this reason, he added illness to it, and healing and death to it, just as the companion of Moses, peace be upon him, did in adding the breaking of the ship to it. When he made breaching it a disgrace, he added the killing of the boy to him and to his Lord because of the mercy it entails for his parents, and what ma