Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| Listen, then, O Church, you who steer the ship of purity and virginity, you who nurse those of tender and untaught years, you who care for truth and care for kindness to humankind, you from whose ever-flowing spring a saving draught trickles down. And may you too listen in reverent silence, you who worship God with a sincere heart (and for that reason he cares for you), turning your minds not to the phrasing so much as to the truth of what is said, and not to me who speak it but to the piety of the devotion.
2| For what grace could words have if the disposition of the speaker were left unexamined? Perhaps, then, I dare great things; but I lay the blame for my daring on the love for the divine that is born in me. For that love overpowers even modesty. That is why above all I take as my helpers those who are versed in the divine mysteries, so that if some slip should occur in what I say, you may follow along beside me and set it right, not looking for consummate learning but welcoming the faithfulness of the attempt. And may the mightiest inspiration of the Father and of his beneficent Son be with me as I utter these things, whatever that inspiration itself may speak and set before the mind. For if anyone, pursuing rhetoric or any other science without God, has supposed that he can bring the work to adequate precision, he has been found imperfect, both he himself and the thing he labors at. Yet those who have ever been blessed with divine inspiration must not shrink back or delay. Therefore we too, declining any length of postponement, will attempt to bring our purpose to its completion.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/031-constantine-s-oration-to-the-assembly-of-the-saints-chapter#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.
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