Latin original · 4 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss
ℹ️ This corpus has no morphological tagging. Glosses are matched by word form against a dictionary — a match does not prove it is the same word (an inflected form can coincide with another word’s lemma). Verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
Having joyfully and in haste transcribed the works you sent at my entreaty to be copied, I at once directed both volumes to your beatitude. But as for that teaching, unique and beyond compare, by which—most completely unfolding the questions of great mysteries from both Testaments and lifting the veil—you pour the true light of spiritual understanding into the eyes of the heart: how great my admiration of it has been I could not more plainly declare than by confessing that I cannot worthily praise it. And yet why should I call myself merely unequal to extolling the things you publish? Be it said without offense to all who are best trained in those studies they call the liberal arts—I do not think that the marvelous merits of your books can be sufficiently and worthily set forth even by them.
For although they decree it easier to judge than to compose, yet I am so persuaded that this is not easy that I rightly conclude no one could prove a more fitting herald of so illustrious a work than its own discoverer and author—since what no one was able so to invent, surely no one praises as he. But while I turn these things over silently within myself, there comes to mind something which, as a boy, with the curiosity proper to that age, I once read in passing in the libraries of those devoted to secular letters.
For when the builder and lord of the aforementioned edifice had set, among the likenesses fashioned of little stones or of variously colored waxes, beneath each one—whether of orators or even of poets—particular epigrams in their own portraits, when he came to the poet of preeminent eloquence, he began thus: 'His own songs better praise the bard Virgil—while rivers run into the seas, while shadows traverse the hollows of the mountains, while the heaven feeds the stars. Ever shall thine honor, thy name, and thy praises abide.' And truly—provided that by your prayers I be free from blame, in that amid the sacred letters and commemorations of the saints I bring forth examples of worldly writings—deservedly, as I call to mind lord Eucherius, that remembered work returns to my memory.
For while the things set forth above shall endure, you shall be celebrated, worthy of proclamation, by the mouth and love of all Christians in time to come, so long as you teach those who come after. Pray for me, lord truly holy and friend of God, and father to be received by me with all reverence in Christ.