The Gospel of Barnabas - chapter 167

Sacred-Texts Islam
  

167.

'Accordingly, if your mind will not rest content in this, and ye 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 resteth on the top of the water? Tell me, why is it that, while water extinguisheth fire, and earth fleeth 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, ye shall know not this—nay, 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 eterniny of God? Assuredly they shall by no means be able to understand this, because, man being finite and composite with the body, which, as saith the prophet Solomon, being corruptible, presseth 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: "Verily thou art a hidden God!" And of the messenger of God, how God hath created him, he saith: "His generation, who shall narrate? And of the working of God he saith: "Who hath been his counsellor?" Wherefore God saith unto 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 unto 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 anyone refuse health, though the manner of it be not understood. For I know not even now how God by my touch healeth the sick.'