That sometimes the literal sense must be adhered to. — But sometimes he who neglects to receive the words of the history according to the letter hides the light of truth offered to him; and while he laboriously desires to find something else within them, he loses that which he could have attained outwardly without difficulty. For the holy man says: If I have denied to the poor what they wished, and have made the eyes of the widow to wait; if I have eaten my morsel alone, and the fatherless has not eaten of it; if I have despised him that passed by because he had no clothing, and the poor man without covering; if his sides have not blessed me, and if he was not warmed with the fleeces of my sheep (Job xxxi, 16 and following).
If we forcibly bend these to the sense of allegory, we empty out all his deeds of mercy. For the divine discourse, just as it exercises the prudent with mysteries, so for the most part it refreshes the simple at its surface. It has in the open that with which it may nourish the little ones; it keeps in secret that with which it may hold suspended in wonder the minds of the sublime. It is as it were a certain river, so to speak, both shallow and deep, in which both a lamb may walk and an elephant may swim. As, therefore, the opportunity of each several place demands, so through the diligence of exposition the order shifts of itself; so that it may find the sense of the divine utterance the more truly, the more it alternates through the various kinds of matters, as each thing shall require.