Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| But what we have to say would in any case be superfluous for you, who have often perceived the saving divinity by experience itself, and have become a herald of the truth to all, not in words but in deeds themselves. For you yourself, O emperor, could tell us, if you wished and had the leisure, of countless manifestations of your Savior, countless visits in your sleep:
2| I do not mean his promptings, which are secret to us, but those laid down in your own reasoning, setting before you, concerning the providence of the whole, what serves the common good and is useful in every way.
3| You could recount to us the manifest help in wars given by the God who is your champion and guardian: the destruction of enemies and plotters, the rescues in dangers, the abundance in want, the support when you were left alone, the ways found out of desperate straits, the foreknowledge of things to come, the forethought for the general welfare, the inquiries into what was obscure, the undertaking of great enterprises, the arrangements of civil affairs, the ordering of armies, the corrections made case by case, the ordinances for the common good, the laws that benefit life. You could enumerate, leaving nothing out, every one of the things that escape us but are known to you alone and stored up in your imperial memory as in secret treasuries. For all these reasons, then, fittingly, using these very things as brilliant evidences of the saving power, you have set up before all people, believers and unbelievers alike, a house of prayer as a trophy of his triumph over death, a holy temple for the holy God, splendid, great and most beautiful dedications of immortal life and of a divine kingdom, offerings most fitting and proper to a victorious emperor, gifts dedicated to the all-ruling Savior; and these you have set around the witness and monument of immortal life. Stamping the image of the heavenly Word of God, victor and bearer of trophies, in imperial characters, you proclaim to all the nations, with brilliant and unshadowed voices, in deed and in word, the pious and God-loving confession.
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