The Gospel of Barnabas

Accordingly, if your mind will not rest content in this, and you be fain to say again: "Why so?" I will disclose to you a wherefore." It is this. Tell me, wherefore cannot a [single] stone rest on the top of the water, yet the whole earth rests on the top of the water? Tell me, why is it that, while water extinguishes fire, and earth flees from air, so that none can unite earth, air, water, and fire in harmony, nevertheless they are united in man and are preserved harmoniously?

If, then, you know not this no, all men, as men, cannot know it how shall they understand that God created the universe out of nothing with a single word? How shall they understand the eternity of God? Assuredly they shall by no means be able to understand this, because, man being finite and composite with the body, which, as says the prophet Solomon, being corruptible, presses down the soul, and the works of God being proportionate to God, how shall they be able to comprehend them?

Isaiah, prophet of God, seeing [it to be] thus, exclaimed, saying: Truly you are a hidden God! And of the Messenger of God, how God has created him, he says: His generation, who shall narrate? And of the working of God he says: Who has been his counsellor? Wherefore God says to human nature: Even as the heaven is exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts. Therefore I say to you, the manner of predestination is not manifest to men, albeit the fact is true, as I have told you. Ought man then, because he cannot find out the mode, to deny the fact? Assuredly, I have never yet seen any one refuse health, though the manner of it be not understood. For I know not even now how God by my touch heals the sick."

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