the mountains, and maketh them smoke,676 the weight of whose condescension not even the Cherubim were able to bear but veiled their faces by the shelter of their wings, that this God who surpasses all understanding, and baffles all calculation, having passed by angels, archangels, and all the spiritual powers above, deigned to become man, and to take flesh formed of earth and clay, and enter the womb of a virgin, and be borne there the space of nine months, and be nourished with milk, and suffer all things to which man is liable. Inasmuch then as that which was to happen was so strange as to be disbelieved by many even when it had taken place, He first of all sends prophets beforehand, announcing this very fact. For instance the patriarch predicted it saying “Thou didst spring from a tender shoot my son: thou didst lie down and slumber as a lion;”677 and Esaias saying “Behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call His name Emmanuel;”678 and else- where again “We beheld Him as a young child, as a root in a dry ground;”679 and by the dry ground he means the virgin’s womb. And again “unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,”680 and again “there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall spring out of his root.”681 And Baruch in the book of Jeremiah says “this is our God: no other shall be reckoned by the side of Him: He found out every path of knowledge and gave it to Jacob His servant, and Israel his beloved. After these things also He appeared upon the earth, and held converse with men.”682 And David signifying His incarnate presence said “He shall come down like the rain into a fleece of wool, and like the drop which distills upon the earth”683 because He noiselessly and gently entered into the Virgin’s womb. 4. But these proofs alone did not suffice, but even when He had come, lest what had taken place should be deemed an illusion, He warranted the fact not only by the sight but by duration of time and by passing through all the phases incident to man. For He did not enter once for all into a man matured and completely developed, but into a virgin’s womb, so as to undergo the process of gestation and birth and suckling and growth, and by the length of the time and the variety of the stages of growth to give assurance of what had come to pass. And not even here were the proofs concluded, but even when bearing about the body of flesh He suffered it to experience the infirmities of human nature and to be hungry, and thirsty, and to sleep and feel fatigue; finally also when He came to the cross He suffered 676 Ps. civ. 32. 677 Gen. xlix. 9. 678 Isa. vii. 14. 679 Isa. liii. 2. 680 Isa. ix. 6. 681 Isa. xi. 1. 682 Bar. iii. 35–37. 683 Ps. lxxii. 6. 283 Against Marcionists and Manichæans.