---
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: 47 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/47/
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 47. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/47/"
---

# 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.

## 47. A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord · 3 of 12

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/47/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/47/#p-N

[¶0] Feathered, and every race, or tame or wild,

[¶1] Of beasts, and the sea’s race, and monsterforms

[¶2] Shapeless of swimming things. But since so soon

[¶3] 90 The primal man by primal crime transgressed

[¶4] The law, and left the mandates of the Lord

[¶5] (Led by a wife who counselled all the ills),

[¶6] By death he ’gan to perish. Woman ’twas

[¶7] Who sin’s first ill committed, and (the law

[¶8] 95 Transgressed) deceived her husband. Eve, induced

[¶9] By guile, the thresholds oped to death, and proved

[¶10] To her own self, with her whole race as well,

[¶11] A procreatrix of funereal woes.

[¶12] Hence unanticipated wickedness,

[¶13] 100 Hence death, like seed, for aye, is scattered. Then

[¶14] More frequent grew atrocious deed; and toil

[¶15] More savage set the corrupt orb astir:

[¶16] (This lure the crafty serpent spread, inspired

[¶17] By envy’s self:) then peoples more invent

[¶18] 105 Practices of ill deeds; and by ill deeds

[¶19] Gave birth to seeds of wickedness.

[¶20] And so

[¶21] The only Lord, whose is the power supreme.

[¶22] Who o’er the heights the summits holds of heaven

[¶23] Supreme, and in exalted regions dwells

[¶24] 110 In lofty light for ages, mindful too

[¶25] Of present time, and of futurity

[¶26] Prescient beforehand, keeps the progeny

[¶27] Of ill-desert, and all the souls which move

[¶28] By reason’s force much-erring man—nor less

[¶29] 115 Their tardy bodies governs He—against

[¶30] The age decreed, so soon as, stretched in death,

[¶31] Men lay aside their ponderous limbs, and light

[¶32] As air, shall go, their earthly bonds undone,

[¶33] And take in diverse parts their proper spheres

[¶34] 120 (But some He bids be forthwith by glad gales

[¶35] Recalled to life, and be in secret kept

[¶36] To wait the decreed law’s awards, until

[¶37] Their bodies with resuscitated limbs

[¶38] Revive.) Then shall men ’gin to weigh the awards

[¶39] 125 Of their first life, and on their crime and faults

[¶40] To think, and keep them for their penalties

[¶41] Which will be far from death; and mindful grow

[¶42] Of pious duties, by God’s judgments taught;

[¶43] To wait expectant for their penalty

[¶44] 130 And their descendants’, fruit of their own crime;