The Spurious Epistles

Seeing these things, you were in utter perplexity. And you were ignorant that it was a virgin that should bring forth; but the angels' song of praise struck you with astonishment, as well as the adoration of the Magi, and the appearance of the star. You reverted to your state of [wilful] ignorance, because all the circumstances seemed to you trifling; for you deemed the swaddling-bands, the circumcision, and the nourishment by means of milk contemptible: these things appeared to you unworthy of God.

Again, beheld a man who remained forty days and nights without tasting human food, along with ministering angels at whose presence you shuddered, when first of all you had seen Him baptized as a common man, and knew not the reason thereof. But after His [lengthened] fast you again assumed your wonted audacity, and tempted Him when hungry, as if He had been an ordinary man, not knowing who He was. For you said, “If you be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” Now, this expression, “If you be the Son,” is an indication of ignorance.

For if you had possessed real knowledge, you would have understood that the Creator can with equal ease both create what does not exist, and change that which already has a being. And you tempted by means of hunger Him who nourishes all that require food. And you tempted the very “Lord of glory,” forgetting in your malevolence that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” For if you had known that He was the Son of God, you would also have understood that He who had kept his body from feeling any want for forty days and as many nights, could have also done the same for ever.

Why, then, does He suffer hunger? In order to prove that He had assumed a body subject to the same feelings as those of ordinary men. By the first fact He showed that He was God, and by the second that He was also man.