Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| This is a festival in honor of a great King, and we, the King's children, rejoice in it, filled with God through the teachings of sacred words, while the great King himself leads our feast. By a great King I mean the one who is truly great; and this, I say (the emperor here present will take no offense, but will rather join in praising the theology), is the one who is beyond all things, the highest of all, the supreme, the immeasurably great, whose royal thrones are the vaults of heaven, while the earth is the footstool of his feet... if anyone could conceive of him worthily; and a light flashing all about him with unspeakable radiance of beams forbids to everyone the sight of his Godhead.
2| Around him the heavenly armies move, and powers beyond the world stand as his guard, acknowledging him as their Master and Lord and King. Countless multitudes of angels, companies of archangels, and choirs of holy spirits are illumined by the radiance around him, drawing on it as from ever-flowing springs of light. All the lights, and the divine and intellectual orders of bodiless lights that have received as their lot the region beyond heaven, honor the great King with the loftiest and most wondrous hymns. Between, the great heaven has been spread out like a dark blue curtain, separating those outside from those within the royal halls. And around this heaven, as at the porches of a palace, the sun and moon and the light-bearing bodies of the sky move like torchbearers, honoring the King who is beyond all things, and at his nod and word kindling unquenchable lamps of light for those who have received as their lot the dark region outside heaven.
3| This great King, Christ, our triumphant emperor himself also celebrates in hymns, keenly aware that he is the cause of his reign. Him the God-loving Caesars acknowledge as the source of all good things, having received this lesson from their father. Him the hosts of the armies, the vast peoples throughout the countryside and the cities, and the governors of the provinces, gathered in church, revere, being taught by the great Savior as their teacher. Indeed the whole human race together, nations of every kind, tribes and tongues, all of them in common and each in its own part, though they differ in their judgments on other matters, agree in this one confession alone: they call upon the one and only God by inborn reasonings and by notions they have learned and been taught by themselves.
4| What then? Does not the whole element of the earth also acknowledge him as Master, showing its submission to the nod of the Higher Power through the plants and living creatures that spring up from it? To him, as their cause, the currents of rivers swelling with their streams, and the ever-flowing outpourings of springs that rise from of old and from boundless depths, ascribe his unspeakable wonder-working. Before him the abysses of the sea, shut in by boundless depths, and the arching waves, lifted high into the air and threatening the land with terror, cower as they advance as far as the very shores, fettered by the nod of a divine law. Him too the measured streams of winter rains, the crashing of thunder and the flashing of lightning, the gusts of winds turning back upon themselves, and the passage of clouds through the air make manifest to those who cannot see him with their own eyes.
5| Even the all-shining sun, running its long course through the ages, knows him alone as Lord and, serving at his nod, never dares to step outside its bounds. The moon, yielding its light to the sun, waning and waxing again in the cycles of time, is subject to divine ordinances. The beauties of heaven, gleaming with the dances of the stars, moving in order and harmony and measuring out their own circuits, proclaim the giver of every kind of light. All the heavenly luminaries together, joined in one melody by his nod and word, completing their long course in the circuits of long ages, ride through the contests of the ethereal racecourse. The alternating movements of nights and days, the changes of hours and seasons, the rhythms and orders of the universe, honor the manifold wisdom of the immeasurably great Power. To him also the invisible powers that fly about the open plains of the air send up the theology that is owed and fitting. This great King, indeed, the whole universe itself celebrates in hymns together. Him the heavens above, and the choirs higher than the heavenly vaults, honor. Armies of angels sing his praise with unspeakable hymns, and spirits born of intellectual light proclaim their Begetter as God. Him the timeless ages before this heaven and before the world, and the other countless ages of ages before the whole subsistence of things visible, acknowledge as sole and great Master and Lord.
6| Him the Father's only-begotten Word, who exists before him, himself propitiates on behalf of the salvation of all: the Word who is over all, before all and after all, the great high priest of the great God, older than all time and all ages, first and alone consecrated to the Father's honor. He is glorified with the first rank in ruling the universe and the second in the Father's kingdom, because he himself was the light beyond all things that dances in chorus around the Father, mediating between and dividing off the unoriginate and unbegotten nature from the essence of things that come into being. This light wells up from above, out of a godhead without end and without beginning, and goes forth outward, shining on the region above the heavens and on everything within heaven with the rays of a wisdom brighter than the sun. He would be the guide of this whole universe, the Word of God who is over all and moves through all and passes into all things, seen and unseen alike. From him and through him the emperor dear to God bears the image of the kingdom on high, and in imitation of the greater one he holds the helm and steers the course of all things on earth.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/057-in-praise-of-constantine-chapter-1#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.
← All of Eusebius of Caesarea: The Works of Eusebius of Caesarea