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Epistles of Ignatius
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Chapter 9: Continuation: Satan's Ignorance.
SEEING THESE THINGS: you were in utter perplexity. And you were unaware that it was a virgin who should give birth; but the angels’ song of praise astonished you, as well as the adoration of the Magi and the appearance of the star. You reverted to your state of willful ignorance because all the circumstances seemed trivial to you; for you considered the swaddling clothes, the circumcision, and the nourishment by means of milk contemptible: these things appeared unworthy of God to you.
Again, you saw a man who went forty days and nights without eating human food, with ministering angels at whose presence you shuddered, when at first you had seen Him baptized like a common man, and did not know the reason for it.
But after His extended fast, you again assumed your usual audacity, and tempted Him when hungry, as if He were an ordinary man, not knowing who He was. For you said, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.” Now, this expression, “If you are the Son,” indicates ignorance.
For if you had real knowledge, you would have understood that the Creator can with equal ease both create what does not exist and change what already exists. And you tempted Him through hunger, who nourishes all that require food. And you tempted the very “Lord of glory,” forgetting in your malevolence that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” For if you had known that He was the Son of God, you would have also understood that He who had kept his body from feeling any want for forty days and just as many nights, could also have done so forever.
Why, then, does He suffer hunger? To prove that He had taken on a body subject to the same feelings as those of ordinary men. By the first fact, He showed that He was God, and by the second that He was also man.