The person of the speaker is wretched, miserable, and
nothing to be regarded, but the things that were spoken are the
infallible and eternal truth of God; without observation of which, life
neither can or shall come to mankind. God grant you continuance to the
end.
This much have I briefly spoken of the temptation of Christ Jesus, who
was tempted; and of the time and place of His temptation. Now remains to
be spoken how He was tempted, and by what means. The most part of
expositors think that all this temptation was in spirit and in
imagination only, the corporeal senses being nothing moved. I will
contend with no man in such cases, but patiently will I suffer every man
to abound in his own knowledge; and without prejudice of any man's
estimation, I offer my judgment to be weighed and considered by
Christian charity. It appears to me by the plain text that Christ
suffered this temptation in body and spirit. Likewise, as the hunger
which Christ suffered, and the desert in which He remained, were not
things offered to the imagination, but that the body did verily remain
in the wilderness among beasts, and after forty days did hunger and
faint for lack of food; so the external ear did hear the tempting words
of Satan, which entered into the knowledge of the soul, and which,
repelling the venom of such temptations, caused the tongue to speak and
confute Satan, to our unspeakable comfort and consolation.
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