---
title: "Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Commodian and Origen"
author: "Various Church Fathers"
translator: "S. Thelwall and others; A. Cleveland Coxe (ed.)"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Church Fathers"
section: 31 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/31/
cite: "Various Church Fathers, tr. S. Thelwall and others; A. Cleveland Coxe (ed.), Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Commodian and Origen, section 31. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/31/"
---

# Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Commodian and Origen

*Various Church Fathers, tr. S. Thelwall and others; A. Cleveland Coxe (ed.)*

Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Commodian, and Origen's On First Principles and Against Celsus.

## 31. A Strain of Jonah the Prophet · 2 of 4

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/31/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/31/#p-N

[¶0] A little cloud had stained the lower air

[¶1] With fleecy wrack sulphureous, itself

[¶2] 45 By the wind’s seed excited: by degrees,

[¶3] Bearing a brood globose, it with the sun

[¶4] Cohered, and with a train caliginous

[¶5] Shut in the cheated day. The main becomes

[¶6] The mirror of the sky; the waves are dyed so

[¶7] 50 With black encirclement; the upper air

[¶8] Down rushes into darkness, and the sea

[¶9] Uprises; nought of middle space is left;

[¶10] While the clouds touch the waves, and the waves all

[¶11] Are mingled by the bluster of the winds

[¶12] 55 In whirling eddy. ’Gainst the renegade,

[¶13] ’Gainst Jonah, diverse frenzy joined to rave,

[¶14] While one sole barque did all the struggle breed

[¶15] ’Twixt sky and surge. From this side and from that

[¶16] Pounded she reels; ’neath each wave-breaking blow

[¶17] 60 The forest of her tackling trembles all;

[¶18] As, underneath, her spinal length of keel,

[¶19] Staggered by shock on shock, all palpitates;

[¶20] And, from on high, her labouring mass of yard

[¶21] Creaks shuddering; and the tree-like mast itself

[¶22] 65 Bends to the gale, misdoubting to be riven.

[¶23] Meantime the rising clamour of the crew

[¶24] Tries every chance for barque’s and dear life’s sake:

[¶25] To pass from hand to hand the tardy coils

[¶26] To tighten the girth’s noose: straitly to bind

[¶27] 70 The tiller’s struggles; or, with breast opposed,

[¶28] T’ impel reluctant curves. Part, turn by turn,

[¶29] With foremost haste outbale the reeking well

[¶30] Of inward sea. The wares and cargo all

[¶31] They then cast headlong, and with losses seek

[¶32] 75 Their perils to subdue. At every crash

[¶33] Of the wild deep rise piteous cries; and out

[¶34] They stretch their hands to majesties of gods,

[¶35] Which gods are none; whom might of sea and sky

[¶36] Fears not, nor yet the less from off their poops

[¶37] 80 With angry eddy sweeping sinks them down.

[¶38] Unconscious of all this, the guilty one

[¶39] ’Neath the poop’s hollow arch was making sleep

[¶40] Re-echo stertorous with nostril wide

[¶41] Inflated: whom, so soon as he who guides

[¶42] 85 The functions of the wave-dividing prow

[¶43] Saw him sleep-bound in placid peace, and proud

[¶44] In his repose, he, standing o’er him, shook,