---
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: 48 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/48/
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 48. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/48/"
---

# 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.

## 48. A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord · 4 of 12

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/48/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/48/#p-N

[¶0] Or else to live wholly the life of sheep,

[¶1] Without a name; and in God’s ear, now deaf,

[¶2] Pour unavailing weeping. Shall not God

[¶3] Almighty, ’neath whose law are all things ruled,

[¶4] 135 Be able after death life to restore?

[¶5] Or is there ought which the creation’s Lord

[¶6] Unable seems to do? If, darkness chased,

[¶7] He could outstretch the light, and could compound

[¶8] All the world’s mass by a word suddenly,

[¶9] 140 And raise by potent voice all things from nought,

[¶10] Why out of somewhat could He not compound

[¶11] The well-known shape which erst had been, which He

[¶12] Had moulded formerly; and bid the form

[¶13] Arise assimilated to Himself

[¶14] 145 Again? Since God’s are all things, earth the more

[¶15] Gives Him all back; for she will, when He bids,

[¶16] Unweave whate’er she woven had before.

[¶17] If one, perhaps, laid on sepulchral pyre,

[¶18] The flame consumed; or one in its blind waves

[¶19] 150 The ocean have dismembered; if of one

[¶20] The entrails have, in hunger, satisfied

[¶21] The fishes; or on any’s limbs wild beasts

[¶22] Have fastened cruel death; or any’s blood,

[¶23] His body reft by birds, unhid have lain:

[¶24] 155 Yet shall they not wrest from the mighty Lord

[¶25] His latest dues. Need is that men appear

[¶26] Quickened from death ’fore God, and at His bar

[¶27] Stand in their shapes resumed. Thus arid seeds

[¶28] Are drops into the vacant lands, and deep

[¶29] 160 In the fixt furrows die and rot: and hence

[¶30] Is not their surface animated soon

[¶31] With stalks repaired? and do they not grow strong

[¶32] And yellow with the living grains? and, rich

[¶33] With various usury, new harvests rise

[¶34] 165 In mass? The stars all set, and, born again,

[¶35] Renew their sheen; and day dies with its light

[¶36] Lost in dense night; and now night wanes herself

[¶37] As light unveils creation presently;

[¶38] And now another and another day

[¶39] 170 Rises from its own stars; and the sun sets,

[¶40] Bright as it is with splendour—bearing light;

[¶41] Light perishes when by the coming eve

[¶42] The world is shaded; and the phœnix lives

[¶43] By her own soot renewed, and presently

[¶44] 175 Rises, again a bird, O wondrous sight!