Origen on the need for threatening the uneducated with punishment

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"[...]just as some words are suitable for use with children and are appropriate for their tender age, in order to exhort them to be better, because they still are very yong, so also with those whom the word calls 'the foolish things of this world and the base things and the things that are despised' the ordinary interpretation of punishments is suitable because they have not the capacity for any other means of conversion and of repentance from many evils, except that of fear and the suggestion of punishment. The Bible accordingly says that only those who have been utterly pure in doctrine, morals, and mind will remain untouched by fire and punishments; whereas it says that people not of this character, who need the ministry of punishment by fire according to their merits, will suffer these punishments until an appointed end such as may be fittingly applied by God to those who, although made in His image, have lived contrary to the intention of the nature that is in His image." (Con. Cel. V,16)

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