Philip Schaff

“ For in the most general sense it holds good that it is apparently not possible for any man [27] to remain altogether without experience of ill. For, as one says, the whole world lieth in wickedness;” [28] and again, “The most of the days of man are labour and trouble.” [29] But you will perhaps say, What difference is there between being tempted, and falling or entering into temptation? ”

“ Well, if one is overcome of evil—and he will be overcome unless he struggles against it himself, and unless God protects him with His shield—that man has entered into temptation, and is in it, and is brought under it like one that is led captive. But if one withstands and endures, that man is indeed tempted ”

“ For if it does not reach Him, it cannot pass from Him. For He takes to Himself the person of man, as having been made man. Wherefore also on this occasion He deprecates the doing of the inferior, which is His own, and begs that the superior should be done, which is His Father’s, to wit, the divine will; which again, however, in respect of the divinity, is one and the same will in Himself and in the Father. ”

“ For unless this had been done with a mystical import, He certainly would not, even had He been [21] the most timorous and ignoble of men, have been bedewed in this unnatural way with drops of sweat like drops of blood under the mere force of His agony.
Of like import is also the sentence in the narrative which tells us that an angel stood by the Saviour and strengthened Him. For this, too, bore also on the economy entered into on our behalf. For those who are appointed to engage in the sacred exertions of conflicts on account of piety, have the angels from heaven to assist them. ”

“ And accordingly, as by the intensity of the supplication and the severe agony, so also by the dense and excessive sweat, he made the facts patent, that the Saviour was man by nature and in reality, and not in mere semblance and appearance, and that He was subject to all the innocent sensibilities natural to men. ”