Elephants and Lambs Swimming and Sailing

Thomas Goodwin, "Short, Holy, and Profitable Sayings of the Reverend Divine, Doctor Thomas Goodwin," in The Works of Thomas Goodwin, Vol. 12, pp. 131-132:

We sail to Glory, not in the salt Sea of our tears, but in the Red Sea of Christ's precious Blood.
...
None are so welcome to that spiritual Canaan as those that swim to it through the Red Sea of their own blood.

Gregory the Great (Gregory I c. 540-603), Preface (Epistle to the Reader), Morals on the Book of Job by S. Gregory the Great: A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Vol. 1, Parts 1 & 2), p. 9:

For as the word of God, by the mysteries which it contains, exercises the understanding of the wise, so usually by what presents itself on the outside, it nurses the simpleminded. It presenteth in open day that wherewith the little ones may be fed; it keepeth in secret that whereby men of a loftier range may be held in suspense of admiration. It is, as it were, a kind of river, if I may so liken it, which is both shallow and deep, wherein both the Lamb may find a footing, and the elephant float at large.