Chapter 21

§ 1.

Thus gathering all into one, He was Himself gathered into one—both stirring up warfare against our enemy, and forcing him out,¹ who at first had led us captive in Adam, and trampling on his head: as thou hast it in Genesis, how that God said to the Serpent, And I will put enmity between thee and the woman,² and between thy seed and her seed: he shall mark thy head, and thou shalt mark His heel. For of Him Who had to be born of a Virgin woman in the likeness of Adam, it [her seed] was announced as “marking the Serpent’s head.” And this is the seed, of which the Apostle in the Epistle to the Galatians saith,³ That the Law of works was appointed, until the Seed should come to Whom the promise was made. And yet more clearly hath he set it forth in the same Epistle, thus saying,⁴ But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman. For the enemy would not have been fairly overcome, had not his conqueror been a man born of a woman. For by a woman he ruled over man from the beginning, when he set himself against mankind. For this cause the Lord also professes Himself the Son of Man; gathering up into Himself that original man, of whom the formation of the woman took place: that as by a conquered man our race went down unto death, so by a conquering Man again we might go up into life: and that as by a man Death received the palm against us, so we on the other hand by a Man might receive the palm against Death.

§ 2.

But the Lord would not have gathered up into Himself that old and original enmity against the Serpent fulfilling the promise of the Creator,⁵ and accomplishing His Command, had He come of another Father. But because He is one and the same, Who in the beginning formed us, and Who sent His Son in the end; the Lord fulfilled His Command, being born of a woman; both destroying our adversary, and perfecting Man according to the image and likeness of God. And therefore He destroyed him no other way, than by the sayings of the Law, using also the Father’s precept as His helper to the destruction and exposure of the apostate Angel. In the first place, fasting forty days, like as did Moses and Elias, He was afterwards an hungered, that we might understand Him to be a true and substantial Man: for it belongeth to man to be hungry after fasting. And next, that the Adversary might have a ground, whereon to wage battle with Him. For because in the beginning it was by meat that he seduced man, not being hungry, to transgress the commandment of God; in the end, though He were hungry, he could not prevail on Him not to wait for the meat which should come from God. For when the other tempted Him,⁶ and said, If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones be made loaves, the Lord on the other hand repulsed him by the precept of the Law,⁷ saying, It is written, Man liveth not by bread alone. Thus to his saying, If Thou art the Son of God, He employed for the blinding of him the avowal of His Manhood, and by a saying of His Father’s made void his first attack. The surfeiting therefore of man, which took place in Paradise upon both of them indulging their taste, was done away with by that craving, which was in this world.

But he being by the Law baffled⁸, tried himself too by a falsehood, to come in conflict again according to the Law.⁹ For leading Him to the highest pinnacle of the Temple,¹⁰ he said, If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down: For it is written, that He hath commanded His Angels concerning Thee, and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest haply Thou dash Thy foot against a stone; hiding his falsehood by means of Scripture, as do all the Heretics. For the saying, He gave His Angels charge concerning him, was written; but no Scripture said, Cast Thyself down; but the Devil brought in this exhortation of himself. Accordingly the Lord refuted him out of the Law,¹¹ saying, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God: by that saying, which is in the Law, signifying, first, that as to Man, Man ought not to tempt God: and as to Himself, that He, in that Man who was in sight would not tempt the Lord His God. The high thoughts then which were in the Serpent, were done away with by the humility which was in the Man: and now was the Devil twice vanquished out of the Scripture, in that he was exposed as recommending things contrary to the Commandment of God, and proved to be in his purpose the enemy of God. And so being greatly confuted, and as it were gathering himself up, arraying all the power in deceit which he had,¹² he, thirdly, shewed unto Him all the Kingdoms of the world,¹³ saying, as Luke records, All these things will I give thee,¹⁴ (for to me are they delivered, and to whom I will I give them,) if thou wilt fall down and worship me. The Lord therefore, exposing him as he was, saith Be gone Satan:¹⁵ for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. Laying him bare by that name, and shewing Himself, who He was. For Satana, a Hebrew word, signifieth Apostate. And thus overcoming him the third time, for the future He drave him away from Himself, as fairly overcome: and the transgression of God’s commandment which had been in Adam was done away, by the precept of the Law which the Son of Man observed, not transgressing the Commandment of God.

§ 3.

Who then is the Lord God, to whom Christ beareth witness; whom no one shall tempt, and whom all ought to adore, and to serve Him alone? Without any doubt at all it is that God who gave also the Law. For these things had been foretold in the Law, and by the sentence of the Law the Lord on the one hand sheweth, that the Law announces the Word of God from the Father; on the other, the apostate Angel of God is overthrown by its voice, his Being exposed, and he vanquished by the Son of man keeping the Command of God. For since he at first persuaded man to break the precept of his Maker,¹⁶ he had him accordingly in his own Power: which Power is transgression and Apostasy, and by these he bound the Man—it was also meet that he on the contrary should through Man be overcome and bound with the same chains, wherewith he bound the man: that Man, being loosed, might return unto the Lord, leaving to him the chains wherewith he had been himself bound, i.e., transgression. For the binding of him was the loosing of man,¹⁷ since no man can enter into a strong man’s house and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man. On the other hand therefore the Lord, by the Word of that God who made all, exposing and overcoming him by the commandment, (And the Commandment of God is the Law); that of Him which was man shewing him to be a fugitive, and breaker of the Law, and apostate from God:—the Word afterwards with a strong hand bound him, as His own runaway slave, and divided his spoils, i.e., the men who were detained by him, whom he was unjustly making use of. And while he was justly led captive, who had led man captive unjustly; man, who had before been led captive, was withdrawn from his possessor’s power, by the Mercy of God the Father: who pitied His own handy work, and gave it salvation, renewing it by the Word, i.e., by Christ: that man might learn by actual trial, how that not of himself but by free gift of God he receiveth incorruption.