---
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: 53 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/53/
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 53. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/53/"
---

# 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.

## 53. A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord · 9 of 12

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/53/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/53/#p-N

[¶0] Hath Majesty divine made itself known!

[¶1] The sounds of heaven ye have heard; have seen

[¶2] 355 Its lightnings; have experienced its rains

[¶3] Assiduous; its ires of winds and hail!

[¶4] How often nights and days serene do make

[¶5] Your seasons—God’s gifts—fruitful with fair yields!

[¶6] Roses were vernal; the grain’s summer-tide

[¶7] 360 Failed not; the autumn variously poured

[¶8] Its mellow fruits; the rugged winter brake

[¶9] The olives, icy though they were: ’twas God

[¶10] Who granted all, nor did His goodness fail.

[¶11] At God earth trembled; on His voice the deep

[¶12] 365 Hung, and the rivers trembling fled and left

[¶13] Sands dry; and every creature everywhere

[¶14] Confesses God! Ye (miserable men!)

[¶15] Have heaven’s Lord and earth’s denied; and oft

[¶16] (Horrible!) have God’s heralds put to flight;

[¶17] 370 And rather slain the just with slaughter fell;

[¶18] And, after crime, fraud ever hath in you

[¶19] Inhered. Ye then shall reap the natural fruit

[¶20] Of your iniquitous sowing. That God is

[¶21] Ye know; yet are ye wont to laugh at Him.

[¶22] 375 Into deep darkness ye shall go of fire

[¶23] And brimstone; doomed to suffer glowing ires

[¶24] In torments just. God bids your bones descend

[¶25] To penalty eternal; go beneath

[¶26] The ardour of an endless raging hell;

[¶27] 380 Be urged, a seething mass, through rotant pools

[¶28] Of flame; and into threatening flame He bids

[¶29] The elements convert; and all heaven’s fire

[¶30] Descend in clouds.

[¶31] Then greedy Tartarus

[¶32] With rapid fire enclosed is; and flame

[¶33] 385 Is fluctuant within with tempest waves;

[¶34] And the whole earth her whirling embers blends!

[¶35] There is a flamy furrow; teeth acute

[¶36] Are turned to plough it, and for all the years

[¶37] The fiery torrent will be armed: with force

[¶38] 390 Tartarean will the conflagrations gnash

[¶39] Their teeth upon the world. There are they scorched

[¶40] In seething tide with course precipitate;

[¶41] Hence flee; thence back are borne in sharp career;

[¶42] The savage flame’s ire meets them fugitive!

[¶43] 395 And now at length they own the penalty

[¶44] Their own, the natural issue of their crime.