The Gospel of Barnabas

When he had finished the prayer of dawn, Jesus sat down under a palm tree, and thither his disciples drew nigh to him. Then said Jesus: `As God liveth, in whose presence standeth my soul, many are deceived concerning our life. For so closely are the soul and the sense joined together, that the more part of men affirm the soul and the sense to be one and the same thing, dividing it by operation and not by essence, calling it the sensitive, vegetative, and intellectual soul. But verily, I say to you, the soul is one, which thinketh and liveth. O foolish ones, where will they find the intellectual soul without life? Assuredly, never. But life without sense will readily be found, as is seen in the unconscious when the sense leaveth him.'

Thaddaeus answered: `O master, when the sense leaveth the life, a man hath not life.'

Jesus answered: `This is not true, because man is deprived of life when the soul departeth; because the soul returneth not any more to the body, save by miracle. But sense departeth by reason of fear that it receiveth, or by reason of great sorrow that the soul hath. For the sense hath God created for pleasure, and by that alone it liveth, even as the body liveth by food and the soul liveth by knowledge and love. This [sense] is now rebellious against the soul, through indignation that it hath at being deprived of the pleasure of paradise through sin. Wherefore there is the greatest need to nourish it with spiritual pleasure for him who willeth not that it should live of carnal pleasure. Understand ye? Verily I say unto you, that God having created it condemned it to hell and to intolerable snow and ice; because it said that it was God; but when he deprived it of nourishment, taking away its food from it, it confessed that it was a slave of God and the work of his hands. And now tell me, how doth sense work in the ungodly? Assuredly, it is as God in them: seeing that they follow sense, forsaking reason and the law of God. Whereupon they become abominable, and work not any good.'