For since this was power to Him—for it belongs to power to contract itself in small things and to be diminished, and to pour itself out in great things and be magnified. But if it were possible for Him to be co-extended with the great and to be made equal to them, yet impossible to be diminished in small things and to contract Himself, it would not be power.
For if you say of a power that this is possible but that is impossible, you cancel its very being as a power, since it is weak in respect of what it cannot do. Nay more, neither would it any longer have any superiority of deity over the things that change; for both men and the creatures that move upon the ground act in those things wherein they are able to do anything, but in those wherein they are unable they fail. Wherefore the Son of God has rather been contained in man for this very reason, that this was not impossible to Him: that by power He both suffered while remaining impassible, and died while procuring immortality for the mortal.
For a body struck or cut by a body is struck or cut just so much as that which strikes strikes and that which cuts cuts. For the blow comes about by the resistance of the thing subjected to that which strikes, the suffering being equal on both sides, both of the agent and of that acted upon. Indeed, if the thing cut does not resist that which cuts with at least a little firmness, that which cuts will not be able to cut.
For when the subjected body does not stand fast against the rush of the sword, but rather yields, the action becomes ineffectual—as also in the case of the finer-textured bodies, fire or air; for in such bodies the impulse of the more solid bodies is dissolved and made inactive. But if stone or iron or wood or anything else (which men, using against one another, slay each other) cannot wound or divide fire or air, because the latter happen to be of a yielding and finer-textured nature—how much more did Wisdom remain unwoundable and impassible, being in no way harmed by anything, even though she was present with the body that was cut and nailed, being better and purer than every nature, next after the God who begot her?