---
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: 33 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/33/
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 33. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/33/"
---

# 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.

## 33. A Strain of Jonah the Prophet · 4 of 4

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/33/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/33/#p-N

[¶0] The rage of sky and main. The billowy waste

[¶1] Grows level, and the ether’s gloom dissolves;

[¶2] The waves on this side, and the blasts on that,

[¶3] 135 Are to their friendly mood restored; and, where

[¶4] The placid keel marks out a path secure,

[¶5] White traces in the emerald furrow bloom.

[¶6] The sailor then does to the reverend Lord

[¶7] Of death make grateful offering of his fear;

[¶8] 140 Then enters friendly ports.

[¶9] Jonah the seer

[¶10] The while is voyaging, in other craft

[¶11] Embarked, and cleaving ’neath the lowest waves

[¶12] A wave: his sails the intestines of the fish,

[¶13] Inspired with breath ferine; himself, shut in;

[¶14] 145 By waters, yet untouched; in the sea’s heart

[¶15] And yet beyond its reach; ’mid wrecks of fleets

[¶16] Half-eaten, and men’s carcasses dissolved

[¶17] In putrid disintegrity: in life

[¶18] Learning the process of his death; but still—

[¶19] 150 To be a sign hereafter of the Lord—

[¶20] A witness was he (in his very self),

[¶21] Not of destruction, but of death’s repulse.