Tertullian

“ Every career, let whoe’er is to-day
485 Bethink him over all things in his mind.
And thus, while life remains, while ’tis allowed
To see the light and change your life, before
The limit of allotted age o’ertake
You unawares, and that last day, which [62] is
490 By death’s law fixt, your senseless eyes do glaze,
Seek what remains worth seeking: watchful be
For dear salvation ”

“ The clouds, and the stars move and quake from height
Of sudden power. [34] When thus God comes, with voice
Of potent sound, at once throughout all realms
200 The sepulchres are burst, and every ground
Outpours bones from wide chasms, and opening sand
Outbelches living peoples ”

“ If this be the right sense, the words are probably inserted, because the conflagration of “the earth and the works that are therein” predicted in 2 Pet. iii. 10, and referred to lower down in this piece, is supposed to have begun, and thus the “depths” of the earth are supposed to be already diminishing.↑ I have ventured to alter one letter of the Latin; and for “quos reddere jussa docebit,” read “quos reddere jussa dolebit.” If the common reading be retained, the only possible meaning seems to be “whom she will teach to render (to God) His commands,” i.e., to render obedience to them ”

“ Waters renewed, even at their fountainheads?
And cut from waving grass the leafy flowers?
10 Forthwith the breezes of celestial light
I will attune. Now be it granted me
To meet the lightsome [2] muses! to disclose
The secret rivers on the fluvial top
Of Helicon, [3] and gladsome woods that grow
15 ’Neath other star. [4] And simultaneously
I will attune in song the eternal flames;
Whence the sea fluctuates with wave immense:
What power [5] moves the solid lands to quake;
And whence the golden light first shot its rays
20 On the new world; or who from gladsome clay
Could man have moulded ”

“ In this and in other passages I have punctuated for myself.↑ Munera mundi.↑ These lines, again, are but a guess at the meaning of the original, which is as obscure as defiance of grammar can well make it. The sense seems to be, in brief, that while the vast majority are, immediately on their death, shut up in Hades to await the “decreed age,” i.e., the day of judgment, some, like the children raised by Elijah and Elisha, the man who revived on touching Elisha’s bones, and the like, are raised to die again. ”

“ And brimstone; doomed to suffer glowing ires
In torments just. [51] God bids your bones descend
To [52] penalty eternal; go beneath
The ardour of an endless raging hell; [53]
380 Be urged, a seething mass, through rotant pools
Of flame ”

“ The writer is (or feigns to be) an African. Helicon, of course, is in Europe.↑ Virtus.↑ Sæculo.↑ Mundum.↑ Compositis.↑ I have endeavoured to give some intelligible sense to these lines; but the absence of syntax in the original, as it now stands, makes it necessary to guess at the meaning as best one may.↑ Venturi ævi.↑ “But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.”—Shakespeare, Macbeth, act iii. scene 2.↑ Sæcula.↑ Sæcula.↑ Sermone tenus: i.e., the exertion (so to speak) needed to do such mighty works only extended to the uttering of a speech ”

“ But the emendation, which is at all events simple, seems to give a better sense: “being bidden to render the dead, whom she is keeping, up, earth will grieve at the throes it causes her, but will do it.”↑ Subitæ virtutis ab alto.↑ Comis, here “the heads.”↑ This passage is imitated from Virgil, Æn., vi. ”

“ So Burke: “I attest the former, I attest the coming generations.” This “attesting of its acts” seems to refer to Matt. xxv. 44. It appeals to them in hope of mitigating its doom.↑ This seems to be the sense. The Latin stands thus: “Flammas pro meritis, stagnantia tela tremiscunt.”↑ Or, “banished.”↑ I adopt the correction (suggested in Migne) of justis for justas.↑ This is an extraordinary use for the Latin dative ”