Since the apostle said, "By man death entered into the world," it was surely essential that the victory over death should be achieved by man as well, and the body of death be shewn to be the body of life, and the reign of sin that before ruled in the mortal body be destroyed, so that it should no longer serve sin but righteousness. And since long ago man fell through the sins of the flesh, the standard of victory over his enemies was rightly upraised again by one that was sinless and undefiled of all evil. And who were these enemies, but they who of old had overcome the human race by the pleasures of the flesh? And moreover men required that the Word of God coming to dwell with them, and to give holy teaching to their earthly ears, and to shew the power of God clearly to their eyes by signs and (314) wonders, should accomplish His work through our natural equipment, for it is only possible for men to see bodily things with their eyes, and to hear that which is spoken by the tongue. It was then in order that we might receive the knowledge of spiritual and unembodied things by our bodily senses that God the Word employed a speech that was akin and familiar to us, and shewed forth all the salvation given through Him to those who themselves could (b) hear and see His divine words and works. And this He did, not being like ourselves bound down by the limitations of the body, nor experiencing aught below or above His Divinity, nor hampered as a human soul is by the body so as to be unable to act as God, or to be omnipresent as the Word of God, and to fill all things and to extend through all: but He incurred no stain or corruption or pollution from the body He had taken, because, as the Word of God, He remained by nature without body, or substance, or flesh, and went through the whole dispensation of His Incarnation with divine power and in ways unknown to us, sharing (c) what belonged to Him, but not receiving what belonged to others. What, then, was there to fear in the dispensation of the Incarnation, since the undefiled was incapable of defilement, and the pure of being soiled by the flesh, and the passionless Word of God of corruption by the proper nature of the body, any more than the rays of the sun are harmed by touching corpses and all sorts of bodily things? Nay, on the contrary, the corruptible was transformed by the divine Word, and was made holy and immortal, even (d) as He willed: yea, and so it ministered to the divine purpose and works of the Spirit. And all this was done by a loving God and by the Word of God for the curing and salvation of all men, in accordance with the words of the prophets who had foretold from ancient days His wondrous Birth of a Virgin. And quite necessarily the prophet prefaces Christ's Birth of a Virgin by an exhortation to attention, crying aloud to his hearers, "If ye will not believe, neither (315) shall ye understand."