Augustine of Hippo : We have been led out of Egypt where we were serving the devil as a pharaoh, where we were doing works of clay amid earthly desires, and we were laboring much in them. For Christ cried out to us, as if we were making bricks, "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened." Led out of here, we were led over through baptism as through the Red Sea—red for this reason, because consecrated by the blood of Christ—when all our enemies who were assailing us were dead, that is, when our sins have been wiped out. — TRACTATE ON THE GOSPEL OF John 28.9 Gregory of Nazianzus : I have already lived through many paschs, which was the fruit of a long life. But now I desire a purer pasch: to depart from this Egypt, the heavy and dark Egypt of this life, and to be freed from the clay and bricks that held us in bondage and to pass over to the land of promise. — LETTER 120 Origen of Alexandria : According to these things, therefore, God is perhaps said also to have hardened the heart of Pharaoh, namely because the material of his heart was such that it received the presence of the Sun of justice not on that side by which it illumines, but on that by which it burns and hardens: on this account, without doubt, that he too was afflicting the life of the Hebrews in hard works, and was making them work with clay and brick. … And as this visible sun binds fast and hardens the material of clay, so the Sun of justice, by these same rays with which he was illumining the people of Israel, was hardening the heart of Pharaoh, in which were clayey thoughts, according to the very qualities of its own motions. — COMMENTARY ON THE SONG OF SONGS, BOOK 2 Origen of Alexandria : In Egypt were the children of Israel; they were afflicted in the works of Pharaoh the king with clay and brick, until, groaning, they cried out to the Lord, and He, hearing their groaning, sent to them His word through Moses and led them out of Egypt. And we too, therefore, when we were in Egypt — I mean in the errors of this world and in the darkness of ignorance, working the works of the devil in the desires and pleasures of the flesh — the Lord had mercy on our affliction and sent His Word, His only-begotten Son, to rescue us from the ignorance of error and lead us to the light of the divine law. — HOMILIES ON Numbers 27.2