---
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: 44 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/44/
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 44. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/44/"
---

# 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.

## 44. Genesis · 5 of 5

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/44/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/44/#p-N

[¶0] 175 The other turned the earth with curved plough.

[¶1] These, when in course of time they brought their gifts

[¶2] To Him who thunders, offered—as their sense

[¶3] Prompted them—fruits unlike. The elder one

[¶4] Offered the first-fruits of the fertile glebes:

[¶5] 180 The other pays his vows with gentle lamb,

[¶6] Bearing in hand the entrails pure, and fat

[¶7] Snow-white; and to the Lord, who pious vows

[¶8] Beholds, is instantly acceptable.

[¶9] Wherefore with anger cold did Cain glow;

[¶10] 185 With whom God deigns to talk, and thus begins:

[¶11] “Tell Me, if thou live rightly, and discern

[¶12] Things hurtful, couldst thou not then pass thine age

[¶13] Pure from contracted guilt? Cease to essay

[¶14] With gnawing sense thy brother’s ruin, who,

[¶15] 190 Subject to thee as lord, his neck shall yield.”

[¶16] Not e’en thus softened, he unto the fields

[¶17] Conducts his brother; whom when overta’en

[¶18] In lonely mead he saw, with his twin palms

[¶19] Bruising his pious throat, he crushed life out.

[¶20] 195 Which deed the Lord espying from high heaven,

[¶21] Straitly demands “where Abel is on earth? ”

[¶22] He says “he will not as his brother’s guard

[¶23] Be set.” Then God outspeaks to him again:

[¶24] “Doth not the sound of his blood’s voice, sent up

[¶25] 200 To Me, ascend unto heaven’s lofty pole?

[¶26] Learn, therefore, for so great a crime what doom

[¶27] Shall wait thee. Earth, which with thy kinsman’s blood

[¶28] Hath reeked but now, shall to thy hateful hand

[¶29] Refuse to render back the cursed seeds

[¶30] 205 Entrusted her; nor shall, if set with herbs,

[¶31] Produce her fruit: that, torpid, thou shalt dash

[¶32] Thy limbs against each other with much fear.”……