Scholastic authority-dependence doomed effective Christian polemic against Muslims

Evidence

Quotations are necessarily made, in any age, less as a specially good expression of what the author wants to say, than for the validity which inheres in what has been said before and accepted by other men, and has entered into the general consensus of opinion. … A scholastic without authorities was a craftsman robbed of half his tools; and few of his authorities were acceptable to Muslims. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1406