As for the apostolic epistles, what person who is skilled in literary interpretation would think them to be plain and easily understood, when even in… - Origen

But since, if the usefulness of the legislation, and the sequence and beauty of the history, were universally evident of itself, we should not believe that any other thing could be understood in the Scriptures save what was obvious, the word of God has arranged that certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and offences, and impossibili­ties, should be introduced into the midst of the law and the history, in order that we may not, through being drawn away in all directions by the merely attractive na­ture of the language, either altogether fall away from the (true) doctrines, as learn­ing nothing worthy of God, or, by not departing from the letter, come to the knowledge of nothing more divine.

Will they who subdue that fierce longing for sexual pleasures which has reduced the souls of many to a weak and feeble condition, and who subdue it because they are persuaded that they cannot otherwise have communion with God, unless they ascend to Him through the exercise of temperance, appear to you to be the brothers of worms, and relatives of ants, and to bear a likeness to frogs?

And perhaps, just as those who die in this world by the separation of body and soul obtain different positions... in accordance with the differences of their deeds, so those who die, so to speak, in the realm of the heavenly Jerusalem, descend to the lower regions of our world, in such a way as to occupy different positions on earth in proportion to their merits.