Not a human-shaped God; pearls and dogs

Origen went on: These two men the apostle everywhere sets out, in each person. And it seems to me he has not dared to innovate this account himself, but, having understood more nakedly what the scriptures said more obscurely, has spoken it.

Some think that in the Making of the World, after the creation of the human being, And God took dust from the earth and formed the human being is a repetition. It follows for these people that the 'according to the image' is the body, and that they grant God to be human-shaped, or that the form of God is according to this figure. But we are not so mad as to say either that God is composite from worse and better, so that the 'according to the image' would be on both, or that the whole [lacuna], God being, the 'according to the image' has come to be in the worse rather than in the better.

The words are rather fine; we need hearers who have a lean mind. I ask the hearers, then, to watch themselves, lest they ever become the cause of my being charged with throwing the holy things to dogs, to shameless souls. For the barking ones, the dog-like, those stretched toward fornications, toward revilings, do nothing else but yelp, and I must not throw the holy things to such as these. So too I ask the hearers not to become the cause of my being charged with setting pearls of such size — which we try to gather as good merchants — before those who wallow in the uncleannesses of bodies, and who for this reason are called swine.