"In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed."

      Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Prudence" (Essays:  first series, no. 7) par. 14 (Library of America 15 (1983), p. 364).  The comma is absent from p. 235 of vol. 2 of the 1903-1904 edition of the Complete works.

"A better place by far to linger in the night season"

Wycliffe College

     "Even my mother and father may, and in death probably will, forget me (Isa. 49:15; Ps. 27:10). I feel this every day. Perhaps my children have their own version of this sorry sentiment of being abandoned to the solitude of memory. And so I lie awake at night, grasping at what those who gave me life have let go of and left for me to fathom and fix, the impossible task of sleeplessness and of the sleepless ages. Yet I am remembering the wrong things. God responds to Israel: 'Yet will I not forget thee' (Isa. 49:15). A better place by far to linger in the night season. There is, by definition, no guard, no incapacity, no limit set against a memory such as this."

     Ephraim Radner, "The back page:  What to remember," First things no. 350 (February 2025):  71 (72-71).  Opening paragraph:  "I had thought of calling this piece 'Against Memory.' Hyperbolic, perhaps, but I had my reasons. I’ve started regularly waking up in the middle of the night, often for hours at a time. I’m told it’s common for people my age. I start mulling things over. Not just from yesterday, but from all my yesterdays, my life and the people in it. The night is dark, and thoughts tend to go in one direction: failures, disappointments, fears. Things I wish I could forget, and whose disappearance would cost no one but only gain some measure of peace."

"no longer is death terrifying"

     "That death has been dissolved, and the cross has become victory over it, and it is no longer strong but is itself truly dead, no mean proof but an evident surety is that it is despised by all Christ's disciples, and everyone tramples on it, and no longer fears it, but with the sign of the cross and faith in Christ tread it under foot as something dead.  Of old, before the divine sojourn of the Savior, all used to weep for those dying as if they were perishing.  But since the Savior's raising of the body, no longer is death fearsome [(οὐκέτι . . . φοβερός)], but all believers in Christ tread on it as nothing, and would rather choose to die than deny their faith in Christ."

 St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 27, trans. Behr (St. Athanasius the Great On the incarnation:  Greek original and English translation, Popular patristics series 44a (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 108-109).

Textus receptus

 "Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum:  in quo nihil immutatum aut corruptum damus."

     Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ.  [Hē Kainē Diathēkē.]  Novum Testamentum. Ex regiis aliisque optimis editionibus, hac nova expressum:  cui quid accesserit, praefatio docebit.  Lvgd. Batavorum:  Ex Officina Elzeviriana, [1633], p. *2 verso ("TYPOGRAPHI LECTORIBUS de hac editione", "The printers to the readers of this edition").  My thanks to Suzanne Smith for the diversion, and to Armin Siedlecki for the proper "page" terminology.

St. Athanasius on Gen 2:17

"This 'you shall die by death,' what else might it be except not merely to die, but to remain in the corruption of death?"

     St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 3, trans. Behr (St. Athanasius the Great On the incarnation:  Greek original and English translation, Popular patristics series 44a (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 57).

BHS:  כִּ֗י בְּי֛וֹם אֲכָלְךָ֥ מִמֶּ֖נּוּ מ֥וֹת תָּמֽוּת׃

LXX:  ᾗ δ᾽ ἂν ἡμέρᾳ φάγητε ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, θανάτῳ ἀποθανεῖσθε.

Vulgate:  in quocumque enim die comederis ex eo, morte morieris.

     "Indeed, with the common Savior of all dying for us, we, the faithful in Christ, no longer die by death as before [(οὐκέτι νῦν ὥσπερ πάλαι . . . θανάτῳ ἀποθνῄσκομεν)] according to the threat of the law, for such condemnation has ceased.  But with corruption ceasing and being destroyed by the grace of the resurrection, henceforth according to the mortality of the body we are dissolved only for the time which God has set for each, that we may be able 'to attain to a better resurrection' (Heb 11:35).  For as seeds sown in the ground, we do not perish when we are dissolved [(οὐκ ἀπολλύμεθα διαλυόμενοι)], but as sown we shall arise again, death having been destroyed by the grace of the Savior" (Ibid. 21 (p. 95)).

"we were the purpose of his embodiment"

Τῆς γὰρ ἐκείνου ἐνσωματώσεως ἡμεῖς γεγόναμεν ὑπόθεσις

     St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 4, trans. Behr (St. Athanasius the Great On the incarnation:  Greek original and English translation, Popular patristics series 44a (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 59).

"God, . . . rich in means, employs all things for his hidden ends"

"Dieu, . . . fécond en moyens, emploie toutes choses à ses fins cachées".

     Fr. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, "Oraison funébre de Henriette-Marie de France, reine de la Grande-Bretagne" (Chaillot, 16 November 1669), in Bossuet: oraisons funèbres, panégyriques, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 33, ed. the Abbé Bernard Velat (Paris: Librairie Galllimard, 1951): 73.