Gregory the Dialogist

It is evident that those who are alive know and feel what is done to them, but the dead feel nothing. People would be dead in going down to hell if they did evil out of ignorance; but if they have knowledge of evil and yet commit it, they go down alive—wretched and conscious—to the hell of iniquity.

The spirit which is carried out of itself to pride is made to remember the condition to which it is subject, owing to the ills of the flesh which it bears. This was rightly indicated though Balaam (if only he had been willing to follow obediently the voice of God!) in that his journey was retarded. For we see Balaam on the way to attain his purpose, but the beast under him thwarts his intention. The ass, stopped by a command, perceives an angel not seen by the mind of the man. For commonly the flesh, retarded by affliction, manifests to the mind the God whom the mind itself did not see, though it dominates the flesh, owing to the scourgings it receives.

But when the land of promise had at length been reached, [Moses] was called into the mountain and heard of the fault which he had committed eight and thirty years before, as I have said, in that he had doubted about drawing water from the rock. And for this reason he was told that he might not enter the land of promise. Herein it is for us to consider how formidable is the judgment of the almighty God, who did so many signs through that servant of his whose fault he still bore in remembrance for so long a time.