God seeks from us and entreats us, not because he needs something that we have to give him but, after we have given it to him, he will account that very thing to us for our salvation.

[Trypho the Jew said,] But now, return to the original topic and prove to us that the prophetic Spirit ever admits the existence of another God, besides the Creator of all things; and do be careful not the mention the sun and moon, which, Scripture tells us, God permitted the Gentiles to worship as gods.^[1] Even prophets often misuse the word in this sense when they say, ‘Your God is God of gods and Lord of lords,’ often adding, ‘the great and mighty and terrible.’ Such words are used not as if they were really gods but because the word is instructing us that the true God, the Creator of all, is the sole Lord of all those who are falsely regarded as gods and lords. To convince us of this the Holy Spirit said through David: ‘The gods of the Gentiles (although reputed as gods) are idols of demons, and not gods.’^[2] And he places a curse upon those who make or worship such idols.

Trypho, I answered, . . . They who worship these idols and similar objects are justly condemned.

When we read in sacred history that Jacob went down into Egypt with seventy-five souls,^[1] we understand the flesh also to be intended together with the souls. So then the Word, when he became flesh, took with the flesh the whole of human nature. And hence it was possible that hunger and thirst, fear and dread, desire and sleep, tears and trouble of spirit, and all such things, were in him. For the Godhead, in its proper nature, admits no such affections, nor is the flesh by itself involved in them, if the soul is not affected coordinately with the body.