---
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: 38 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/38/
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 38. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/38/"
---

# 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.

## 38. A Strain of Sodom · 5 of 6

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/38/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/38/#p-N

[¶0] Inhospitable, with its lords, is gone:

[¶1] The champaign is one pyre; here embers rough

[¶2] And black, here ash-heaps with hoar mould, mark out

[¶3] The conflagration’s course: evanished

[¶4] 180 Is all that old fertility which Lot,

[¶5] Seeing outspread before him,…

[¶6] No ploughman spends his fruitless toil on glebes

[¶7] Pitchy with soot: or if some acres there,

[¶8] But half consumed, still strive to emulate

[¶9] 185 Autumn’s glad wealth, pears, peaches, and all fruits

[¶10] Promise themselves full easely to the eye

[¶11] In fairest bloom, until the plucker’s hand

[¶12] Is on them: then forthwith the seeming fruit

[¶13] Crumbles to dust ’neath the bewraying touch,

[¶14] 190 And turns to embers vain.

[¶15] Thus, therefore (sky

[¶16] And earth entombed alike), not e’en the sea

[¶17] Lives there: the quiet of that quiet sea

[¶18] Is death!—a sea which no wave animates

[¶19] Through its anhealant volumes; which beneath

[¶20] 195 Its native Auster sighs not anywhere;

[¶21] Which cannot from its depths one scaly race,

[¶22] Or with smooth skin or cork-like fence encased,

[¶23] Produce, or curled shell in single valve

[¶24] Or double fold enclosed. Bitumen there

[¶25] 200 (The sooty reek of sea exust) alone,

[¶26] With its own crop, a spurious harvest yields;

[¶27] Which ’neath the stagnant surface vivid heat

[¶28] From seething mass of sulphur and of brine

[¶29] Maturing tempers, making earth cohere

[¶30] 205 Into a pitch marine. At season due

[¶31] The heated water’s fatty ooze is borne

[¶32] Up to the surface; and with foamy flakes

[¶33] Over the level top a tawny skin

[¶34] Is woven. They whose function is to catch

[¶35] 210 That ware put to, tilting their smooth skin down

[¶36] With balance of their sides, to teach the film,

[¶37] Once o’er the gunnel, to float in: for, lo!

[¶38] Raising itself spontaneous, it will swim

[¶39] Up to the edge of the unmoving craft;

[¶40] 215 And will, when pressed, for guerdon large, ensure

[¶41] Immunity from the defiling touch

[¶42] Of weft which female monthly efflux clothes.

[¶43] Behold another portent notable,

[¶44] Fruit of that sea’s disaster: all things cast