Page:משנה תורה דפוס ווארשא-ווילנא כרך ראשון 1.pdf/17

 2 And if it should come upon your mind that there is no Cause, then nothing else could exist. 3 And if it should come upon your mind that nothing besides Him exists, He would still exist. And He would not be negated by their non-existence. Everything that exists has need of Him; and He, Blessed be He, has no need of them, not even one of them. Therefore, His existence is not like the existence of any one of them. 4 The prophet said, "And the Lord God is true". God alone is the truth, and nothing else is true as is His truth. The Torah says, "There is none beside Him", meaning there is no true Cause beside Him which is like Him. 5 This Cause is Lord of the World and Master of the Earth. And He directs the sphere with a strength that has neither end nor limit, and with a strength that has no disruption. For the sphere revolves continuously, and it is impossible that it revolve without a force that makes it revolve. 6 And the knowledge of this matter is a positive commandment, as it says, "I am the Lord your God". And anyone who brings upon his mind that there may be another god beside Him violates a negative commandment, as it says, "You shall not have other gods before Me". And this is complete heresy. For this is the greatest principle upon which everything else depends. 7 God is one. He is not two and not more than two. Rather, He is one and His unity is unlike the unity of anything else that exists in the world. He is not like one genus that includes many other specifics. And He is not like one body that can be divided into parts and extremities. Rather, His unity is such that there is no unity like His in the world. If there were many gods, they would possess bodies and forms, because the things are counted are not equal in there existences, which are separate one from the other, rather in the events that happen to bodies and forms. And if the Creator had a body and a form, he would have an end and a limit, because it is impossible that a body does not have an end. And if a body has end and limit, its strength will also have end and cessation. And our God, blessed be His name, since His strength has no end and nothing to disrupt it - since the sphere revolves continuously - His strength is not the strength of a body. And since He does not have a body, events do not occur to Him as they occur to bodies, which can be split and divided by something else. Therefore it is impossible that He be anything but one. And the knowledge of this matter is a positive commandment, as it says, "The Lord is our God, the Lord is One". 8 It is clear in the Torah and the books of the prophets that God has neither body nor form, as it says, "For the Lord is God in the Heaven above and the Earth below". And a body cannot be in two places. And as it says, "For you have not seen any image". And as it says, "And to what shall you compare Me and I be equal". And if He had a body, He could be compared to other bodies. 9 If so, what does it mean that in the Torah "And beneath His feet"? Or what is written "with the finger of God", "the hand of the Lord", "the eyes of the Lord", "the ears of the Lord", and so