---
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: 49 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/49/
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 49. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/49/"
---

# 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.

## 49. A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord · 5 of 12

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/49/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/49/#p-N

[¶0] After her burnings! The bare tree in time

[¶1] Shoots with her leaves; and once more are her boughs

[¶2] Curved by the germen of the fruits.

[¶3] While then

[¶4] The world throughout is trembling at God’s voice,

[¶5] 180 And deeply moved are the high air’s powers,

[¶6] Then comes a crash unwonted, then ensue

[¶7] Heaven’s mightiest murmurs, on the approach of God,

[¶8] The whole world’s Judge! His countless ministers

[¶9] Forthwith conjoin their rushing march, and God

[¶10] 185 With majesty supernal fence around.

[¶11] Angelic bands will from the heaven descend

[¶12] To earth; all, God’s host, whose is faculty

[¶13] Divine; in form and visage spirits all

[¶14] Of virtue: in them fiery vigour is;

[¶15] 190 Rutilant are their bodies; heaven’s might

[¶16] Divine about them flashes; the whole orb

[¶17] Hence murmurs; and earth, trembling to her depths

[¶18] (Or whatsoe’er her bulk is), echoes back

[¶19] The roar, parturient of men, whom she,

[¶20] 195 Being bidden, will with grief upyield. All stand

[¶21] In wonderment. At last disturbed are

[¶22] The clouds, and the stars move and quake from height

[¶23] Of sudden power. When thus God comes, with voice

[¶24] Of potent sound, at once throughout all realms

[¶25] 200 The sepulchres are burst, and every ground

[¶26] Outpours bones from wide chasms, and opening sand

[¶27] Outbelches living peoples; to the hair

[¶28] The members cleave; the bones inwoven are

[¶29] With marrow; the entwined sinews rule

[¶30] 205 The breathing bodies; and the veins ’gin throb

[¶31] With simultaneously infused blood:

[¶32] And, from their caves dismissed, to open day

[¶33] Souls are restored, and seek to find again

[¶34] Each its own organs, as at their own place

[¶35] 210 They rise. O wondrous faith! Hence every age

[¶36] Shoots forth; forth shoots from ancient dust the host

[¶37] Of dead. Regaining light, there rise again

[¶38] Mothers, and sires, and high-souled youths, and boys,

[¶39] And maids unwedded; and deceased old men

[¶40] 215 Stand by with living souls; and with the cries

[¶41] Of babes the groaning orb resounds. Then tribes

[¶42] Various from their lowest seats will come:

[¶43] Bands of the Easterns; those which earth’s extreme

[¶44] Sees; those which dwell in the downsloping clime