---
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: 93 of 199
url: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/93/
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 93. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/93/"
---

# 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.

## 93. General Reply to Sundry of Marcion's Heresies · 2 of 8

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/93/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/church-fathers-tertullian-minucius-felix-commodian-origen/93/#p-N

[¶0] Why seek so late? If not his own, why rob

[¶1] 45 Bandit-like? and why ply with words unknown

[¶2] So oft throughout Law’s rein a People still

[¶3] Lingering ’neath the Law? If, too, he comes

[¶4] To pity and to succour all combined,

[¶5] And to re-elevate men vanquisht quite

[¶6] 50 By death’s funereal weight, and to release

[¶7] Spirit from flesh’s bond obscene, whereby

[¶8] The inner man (iniquitously dwarfed)

[¶9] Is held in check; why, then, so late appear

[¶10] His ever-kindness, duteous vigilance?

[¶11] 55 How comes it that he ne’er at all before

[¶12] Offered himself to any, but let slip

[¶13] Poor souls in numbers? and then with his mouth

[¶14] Seeks to regain another’s subjects: ne’er

[¶15] Expected; not known; sent into the orb.

[¶16] 60 Seeking the “ewe” he had not lost before,

[¶17] The Shepherd ought to have disrobed himself

[¶18] Of flesh, as if his victor-self withal

[¶19] Had ever been a spirit, and as such

[¶20] Willed to rescue all expelled souls,

[¶21] 65 Without a body, everywhere, and leave

[¶22] The spoiled flesh to earth; wholly to fill

[¶23] The world on one day equally with corpses

[¶24] To leave the orb void; and to raise the souls

[¶25] To heaven. Then would human progeny

[¶26] 70 At once have ceased to be born; nor had

[¶27] Thereafter any scion of your kith

[¶28] Been born, or spread a new pest o’er the orb.

[¶29] Or (since at that time none of all these things

[¶30] Is shown to have been done) he should have set

[¶31] 75 A bound to future race; with solid heart

[¶32] Nuptial embraces would he, in that case

[¶33] Have sated quite; made men grow torpid, reft

[¶34] Of fruitful seed; made irksome intercourse

[¶35] With female sex; and closed up inwardly

[¶36] 80 The flesh’s organs genital: our mind

[¶37] Had had no will, no potent faculty

[¶38] Our body: after this the “inner man”

[¶39] Could withal, joined with blood, have been infused

[¶40] And cleaved to flesh, and would have ever been

[¶41] 85 Perishing. Ever perishes the “ewe:”

[¶42] And is there then no power of saving her?

[¶43] Since man is ever being born beneath

[¶44] Death’s doom, what is the Shepherd’s work, if thus