The Lord also presented himself to be tempted by the devil, in order to be our Mediator in overcoming his temptations by giving us not only the strength of his help but also the encouragement of his example. But Satan's first attempts after Christ's baptism to steal into the inner citadel of his mind by every possible entry were foiled, and every form of seductive temptation was used up in the desert without success; he, the spirit of death, had failed to overpower spiritual Life, and so he turned himself, avid for any sort of human death, to procuring the death that he was able and permitted to inflict on that mortal part which the Mediator of life had received from us. And it was precisely here, where he was able to achieve something, that he suffered total defeat; the moment he accepted the power to slay the Lord's flesh from without, the power by which he held us from within was itself slain.