Śāriputra, Maudgalyāyana, and Kāśyapa, who perceived the doctrine of “no birth and no death” of all phenomena and became bodhisattvas without “falling back,” declined to propagate the Lotus Sūtra in the Sahā World during the Latter Age of Degeneration because the difficulty was too much for them to endure. Even those who gained the three supernatural types of knowledge and six supernatural powers and rose to the ranks of shoji and shojū (entered the rank of sagehood) and gained arhatship by practicing the Lotus Sūtra declined to do so. How then can ordinary people in the Latter Age of Degeneration, incapable of extinguishing the three delusions, become practicers of the Lotus Sūtra?

Shijō Kingo-dono Gohenji, Response to Lord Shijō Kingo, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Followers I, Volume 6, Page 142