What, then, was the one who held us most likely to choose to receive? We can form a reasonable inference about what he desired if the things already evident become signs for what we are seeking.
As we explained near the beginning of this work, he closed his eyes to the good through envy of the one who prospered, generated in himself the darkness of evil, and became sick with love of rule—the beginning and foundation of the inclination toward worse things and, so to speak, the mother of the evil that followed. For what would he have exchanged the one he held, if not for something higher and greater in exchange, so that by trading the greater for the lesser he might feed still more the passion of his own conceit?
Yet in everything recorded from ages past he had never known anything like what he observed around the One who then appeared: a conception without union, a birth without corruption, motherhood arising from virginity, voices from the invisible realm testifying from above to the supernatural dignity, the correction of the weaknesses of nature without labor or elaborate means, accomplished by Him with a word alone and an impulse of the will, the return of the dead to life, the rescue of those condemned, the fear that fell upon demons, authority over the disturbances of the air, and passage over the sea—not with the sea separating to either side and exposing its bottom to those passing through, as in the miracle of Moses, but with the surface of the water becoming firm beneath His step and supporting His footprint with a secure resistance. He also disregarded food for as long as He wished, and in the wilderness provided abundant feasts for many thousands, for whom neither heaven poured down manna nor earth supplied the need by producing grain according to its nature.
Instead, the generosity came forth from the ineffable storehouses of divine power: bread appeared ready in the hands of those serving it, as though cultivated there, and became more abundant as those eating were filled. So too with the meal of fish: the sea did not contribute what they needed; rather, it was supplied by the One who had sown the race of fish even in the sea.
And how could anyone go through each of the Gospel miracles one by one? Seeing such power in Him, the enemy saw in the proposed exchange something greater than what he held. For this reason he chose Him to become the ransom for those confined in the prison of death. Yet he could not look directly upon the unveiled manifestation of God unless he saw in Him some share of the flesh that he had already subdued through sin.
For this reason divinity is covered over with flesh, so that, seeing what was familiar and kindred to himself, he would not be frightened by the approach of the transcendent power; and, observing that power gradually shining more brightly through the miracles, he would regard what appeared as desirable rather than frightening. You see how goodness is joined to justice and wisdom is not separated from them.
For devising that divine power should become graspable through the covering of the body, so that the dispensation on our behalf would not be hindered by fear of the divine manifestation, demonstrates all three together: goodness, wisdom, and justice. His choosing to save bears witness to goodness; making the release of the one held a matter of exchange displays justice; and devising a way to make what is ungraspable graspable to the enemy demonstrates the highest wisdom.