Against Celsus 4.71

Since after this Celsus, not understanding the passages in the Scriptures about God as though he had human passions, ridicules those in which words of anger are spoken against the ungodly and threats against those who have sinned, it must be said that, just as we, when talking with very small children, do not aim at the full measure of our own ability in speaking, but adapting ourselves to the weakness of those in our charge say these things and also do what seems useful to us for the conversion and correction of children as children, so the Word of God seems to have arranged what is written, measuring what is fitting in the telling by the capacity of the hearers and by their benefit. And in general, about this manner of telling things about God, it is said in Deuteronomy: "The Lord your God bore with your ways, as a man would bear with the ways of his son." It is as though the Word, taking on human ways for the benefit of human beings, says such things; for the many did not need God, speaking in his own person, to say in a manner befitting himself what was to be said to such people. But one who cares for the clear understanding of the divine writings will find in them the things called spiritual for those who are named spiritual, comparing the intent of what is said to the weaker and of what is proclaimed to the more practised, both often lying in the same passage for one who knows how to hear it.