But Jesus refuses to touch the devil's meat -


"Thy pompous delicacies I contemn,
And count thy specious gifts no gifts, but guiles."
(P. R. ii. 390-1.)


So they were, for at a word


"Both table and provision vanish'd quite,
With sound of harpies' wings and talons heard."
(P. R. ii. 402-3.)


If but one grain of that enchanted food had been eaten, or one drop of
that enchanted liquor had been drunk, there would have been no Cross, no
Resurrection, no salvation for humanity.

The temptation on the mountain is expanded by Milton through the close
of the second book, the whole of the third and part of the fourth. It
is a temptation of peculiar strength because it is addressed to an
aspiration which Jesus has acknowledged.


"Yet this not all
To which my spirit aspir'd: victorious deeds