Origen, on Heb 10:1

“For the law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things; by the selfsame sacrifices which they offer continually every year, can never make the comers thereunto perfect:”

“The law, then, and everything in the law, being inspired, as the apostle says, until the time of amendment, is like those people whose job it is to make statues and cast them in metal. Before they tackle the statue itself, the one they are going to cast in bronze, silver or gold, they first make a clay model to show what they are aiming at. The model is a necessity, but only until the real statue is finished. The model is made for the sake of the statue, and when the statue is ready the sculptor has no further use for the model. Well, it is rather like that with the law and the prophets. The things written in the law and the prophets were meant as types or figures of things to come. But now the artist himself has come, the author of it all, and he has transferred the law, which had only the shadow of the good things to come, to the very image of the things.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.