How reliable was Mrs. Norman P. Judd, reminiscing approximately twenty six years after the event?

"'Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day!  No, no, . . . man was made for immortality.'"

     Abraham Lincoln in 1856, according to Isaac N. Arnold, on p. 28 of  The layman's faith:  "If a man die, shall he live again?":  a paper read before the Philosophical Society of Chicago, Saturday, December 16th, 1882.  Arnold was channeling Mrs. Norman P. Judd, who, however, wrote only (without ever pretending to quote Lincoln),

"[Lincoln] speculated on the possibilities of knowledge which an increased power of the lens would give in the years to come; and then the wonderful discoveries of late centuries as proving that beings endowed with such capabilities as man must be immortal, and created for some high and noble end by him who had spoken those numberless worlds into existence; and made man a little lower than the angels that he might comprehend the glories and wonders of his creation."

     Mrs. Norman B. Judd, "An evening with Mr. Lincoln," in Osborn Hamiline Oldroyd, ed., The Lincoln memorial:  album-immortelles.  Original life pictures, with autographs, from the hands and hearts of eminent Americans and Europeans, contemporaries of the great martyr to liberty, Abraham Lincoln. Together with extracts from his speeches, letters, and sayings. With an introd. by Matthew Simpson, and a sketch of the patriot's life by Isaac N. Arnold (Boston:  D. L. Guernsey, 1882), 522 (520-524), where there is much more, though no occurrence of infinit* specifically.  According to Don E. and Virginia Fehrenbacher, "Mrs. Judd's vagueness about the date and circumstances casts some doubt upon the reliability of this interesting [specifically Mrs. Judd's] recollection" (Recollected words of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Don E. and Virginia Fehrenbacher (Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press, 1996), 271).  Recollected words of Abraham Lincoln, by the way, is a very handy work of reference that places the "recollected words" under the names of those who recollected them, arranged alphabetically, and rates each recollected statement from A to E.  This one gets a D for "A quotation about whose authenticity there is more than average doubt" (liii).  The more expansive recollection of the words of Lincoln on this same occasion as set down by Arnold (above), by contrast, does not appear along with the other recollections subsumed under his name at almost the head of the alphabet on pp. 18-19.
     On the other hand, Isaac N. Arnold could, I suppose, have been present himself that evening, and therefore capable of elaborating on Mrs. Judd's account on the basis of his own memory of the conversation.
     Compare also this account from 1886, which quotes and actually cites "An evening with Mr. Lincoln" (above).
     Militating against the authenticity of this report, however, would be testimony like this, quoted on p. 50 of the 1999 edition of Guelzo's Abraham Lincoln:  redeemer president (Guelzo's source, Stevens' Reporter's Lincoln, 12, attributes it to the young Lincoln, from 1831-1837 resident in [New] Salem, IL, i.e. still nineteen years or more before 1856):  Lincoln "at least once admitted that he could not believe in the personal immortality of the soul.  'So you really believe there isn't any future state?' asked Parthena Hill.   'Mrs. Hill, I'm afraid there isn't,'  Lincoln replied.  "It isn't a pleasant thing to think that when we die that is the last of us.'"
     With thanks to my friend and colleague Dr. Ben McFarland for the diversion.

Pseudo-St. Augustine

Though I have done little more than search the English of the Past Masters version of the New City Press Works, I would be very surprised to be shown that this popular prayer was indeed composed by St. Augustine.  Surely it's just too unimaginative!

"Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy. Amen."

Into whose everlasting beatitude we are raised up

William Bright translation of 1857:

"Almighty and merciful God, unto Whose everlasting blessedness we ascend, not by the frailty of the flesh, but by the activity of the soul; make us ever, by Thine inspiration, to seek after the courts of the heavenly City, and, by Thy mercy, confidently to enter them; through Jesus Christ our Lord."

"W. M. L. Jay" (i.e. Julia L[ouisa] M[atilda] Woodruff?) expanded version of 1897 (p. 246:   “THE PRAYERS | Are taken or compiled from Bright’s Ancient Collects, à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, Knox Little’s Treasury of Devotion, Rowland Williams’s Psalms and Litanies, Christina G. Rosetti’s Face of the Deep, and the Book of Common Prayer”):

"Almighty and merciful God, into whose gracious presence we ascend, not by the frailty of the flesh but by the activity of the soul: Make us ever by thy inspiration to seek after the courts of the heavenly city, whither our Saviour Christ hath ascended, and by thy mercy confidently to enter them, both now and hereafter; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord."

"Leonine" sacramentary of the (5th/)early 7th century: 

"Omnipotens et misericors deus, ad cuius beatitudinem sempiternam non fragilitate carnis, sed alacritate mentis ascenditur:  fac nos atria supernae ciuitatis et te inspirante semper ambire, et tua indulgentia fidenter intrare:  per."

Steve Perisho translation of 2025: 

Almighty and merciful God, into whose sempiternal beatitude [one] is raised up [(ascenditur)] not by the fragility of the flesh but by the ardor of the soul [(mentis)]:  cause us both, [1] you inspiring [us], always to strive for, and, [2] you indulging [us (tua indulgentia, with your indulgence)], boldly to enter, the atria of the supernal city.  Through.

     "Leonine" sacramentary | Sacramentarium Veronense no. 550 (ed. Mohlberg (1956), p. 71, ll. 26-29; ed. Feltoe (1896), p. 71, ll. 10-13).

"It is no dream that I died for you, and that you are saved by Me, any more than your eating and drinking is a dream"

      The source (with thanks to the Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon for the diversion):

      So, when you take the Bread and the Wine, which the Minister of Christ has consecrated (that is to say, set apart for this sacred purpose), what shall you think?  what shall you believe?  The Bread is in itself just bread still, the Wine is just wine.  But because the Lord has told you to take them 'in remembrance of Him,' and because you who take them humbly believe in Him, therefore, that simple Bread, that small drought of Wine, speak straight from Him to you.  They are like the very sound of His Voice, saying:  'All is true, all is yours.  It is no dream that I died for you, and that you are saved by Me, any more than your eating and drinking is a dream.'  They are like the very grasp of His Hand taking hold of your hand, and meaning:  'We are one, poor believing sinner.  I have joined you, I have clasped you, to Myself.  As surely as you touch and taste that Bread and Wine, so surely you, who believe in Me, are one with Me.'

      H. C. G. Moule, At the Holy Communion:  helps for preparation and reception (London:  Seely and Co., Limited, 1903 [1892]), 3.   Here, by the way, so that it can be found by searching, is the variant on the quotation supplied by the Rev. Dr. Harmon:

When you take the bread and the wine, what shall you think? What shall you believe? The bread is in itself just bread still, the wine is just wine, but because the Lord has told you to take them in remembrance of him and because you who take them humbly believe in him, therefore, that simple bread, that small draft of wine speaks straight from him to you. They are like the very sound of his voice saying, 'All is true, all is yours. It is no dream that I died for you and that you are saved by me, any more than your eating and drinking is a dream.' They are like the very grasp of his hand taking hold of your hand and meaning. 'We are one,' says Jesus, 'poor believing sinner. I have joined you. I have clasped you to myself. As surely as you touch and taste that bread and wine, so surely you who believe in me are one with me.'

(Needless to say, I am not, by posting this for others to find, endorsing the claim that "The Bread is in itself just bread still, the Wine is just wine"!)

In necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas

"The fact that other customs and laws are kept by others, yet without violating the Faith or departing from common and universally-held decrees, will not lead the discerning observer into thinking either that those who keep them fall into the wrong, or that those who do not accept them violate the law."

"Where matters of faith are not denied and there is no case of falling away from the common and catholic teaching accepted by all, when some maintain different customs and uses, one should not condemn those who profess or accept them."

"Whenever that which is violated is not the faith, nor (there) is [(there)] a fall from the common and catholic decree, because other customs and laws are kept by others, he who knows how to judge rightly should not think that they who keep these fall into adikia or that they who do not accept them violate the law."

"When the faith remains inviolate, the common and catholic decisions are also safe."

Etc.

     Photius (St. Photios the Great), Patriarch of Constantinople, Epistle 290 to Pope Nicholas I, August/September 861.  See p. 131 ll. 241 ff. of vol. 3 of the Teubner edition ed. B. Laourdas & L. G. Westerink:

Οὕτως ἐν οἷς οὐκ ἔστι πίστις τὸ ἀθετούμενον,  οὐδὲ κοινοῦ τε καὶ καθολικοῦ ψηφίσματος ἔκπτωσις, ἄλλων παρ' ἄλλοις ἐθνῶν τε καὶ νομίμων φυλαττομένων, οὔτε τοὺς φύλακας ἀδικεῖν οὔτε τοὺς μὴ παραδεξαμένους παρανομεῖν ὀρθῶς ἄν τις κρίνειν εἰδὼς διορίσαιτο.

Obviously I have not yet translated that myself, but only reproduced the translations and paraphrases of it that I have found ready-to-hand.
     With thanks to Liz Leahy and her faculty for the diversion.

A cautionary note on 'image' and 'resemblance'

     "The text of Genesis to which Maximus refers[here, namely Gen 1:26,] juxtaposes 'image' and 'resemblance'.  The Gnostics had attributed to these two words a different sense:  the terrestrial, 'hylic' man was fashioned in the image of God; the 'psychic' man, in his resemblance.  It [was] perhaps this usage of the Gnostics that led also Irenaeus, their adversary, into a distinction of sense:  the image comprehends the natural gifts [of] reason [and] self-determination, and is inalienable [(inamisssible)]; the resemblance is given by possession of the Word and participation in the Spirit; lost in Adam, it is restored in Christ.  For Clement of Alexandria and Origen, image and resemblance are linked as power and act, imperfect state and consummation.  Athanasius, by contrast, abandons the Alexandrine tradition anterior [to him] and rejects every distinction between the two notions.  It is the same with Gregory of Nazianzus and with Basil.  In Gregory of Nyssa, the complexity of the question will allow him to say that the image is itself dynamic and that the resemblance is [on the other hand] ontological, [i.e.] not restricted to the operative order [of action alone].  The Antiochenes Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus ignore the distinction [between] the two notions, as does Cyril of Alexandria.  But it becomes once again common after the homily [from the pen] of Pseudo-Gregory of Nyssa, Quid sit ad imaginem et similitudinem.
     "Many texts of Maximus [the Confessor] give expression to a dynamic straining of the natural image towards the free resemblance. . . .  'He who has allowed [(fait)] his mind to be illuminated [(étinceler)] by the flashes of lightning [(éclairs)] that divine contemplations diffuse, who has occupied his reason in the incessant offering of praise to the Creator, and who has purified his sensibility by means of irreproachable representations, this man adds to the natural good of the image the gnomic good of the resemblance.' . . .
     "But the word 'image' does not have only, in Maximus, the precise signification that we see in the preceding texts.  The absence of a break in continuity between the image and the resemblance permits him to pass from the one to the other, and to employ [often] the word 'image' [by itself] alone in the sense of resemblance[, and vice versa]. . . .
     "In the dithelite argumentation of the Dispute, [which was also] based on th[is very] text from Genesis, Maximus employs the two words 'image' and 'resemblance', but in a manner out of concord with the others in which he distinguishes the two notions[,] . . . [such that] the image, because it preserves its resemblance to the archetype, is naturally capable of self-determination [and] The resemblance does not signify here something alienable [(amissible)]; it adds nothing, it seems, to the image."

     Marcel Doucet, F.I.C., "La voluntaté humaine du Christ, spécialement en son agonie:  Maximus le Confesseur, interprète de l’écriture," Science et esprit 37, no. 2 (1985):  128-130 (123-159), following mostly W. J. Burghardt, The image of God in man according to Cyril of Alexandria (Woodstock, MD:  Woodstock College Press, 1957).

"do right and let nothing terrify you"

you are [Sarah's] children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening (ESV)

you are . . . [Sarah's] children if you do right and let nothing terrify you (RSV)

ἧς ἐγενήθητε τέκνα ἀγαθοποιοῦσαι καὶ μὴ φοβούμεναι μηδεμίαν πτόησιν.

Spoken like a true Francophone

Felix Heinzer's Gottes Sohn als Mensch:  die Struktur des Menschseins Christi bei Maximus Confessor (1980), "departing happily from the stereotype, joins French clarity to Germanic thoroughness [(Grundlichkeit)]".

     Marcel Doucet, "Maxime le Confesseur, interprète de l’écriture," Science et esprit 37, no. 2 (1985):  128n21 (123-159).

Leo XIV

"nobody fears the Lord without being among the members of this one man. He is many people yet one individual, many Christians but one Christ. All Christians, in union with their head who has ascended into heaven, form one Christ. It is not as though he were one and we many; no, we who are many are one in him, who is one. Christ, head and body together, is a single individual."

"nemo timet dominum, nisi qui est in membris ipsius hominis: et multi homines sunt, et unus homo est:  multi enim christiani, et unus Christus. ipsi christiani cum capite suo, quod adscendit in caelum, unus est Christus; non ille unus et nos multi, sed et nos multi in illo uno unum. unus ergo homo Christus, caput et corpus."

     St. Augustine, Exposition of Ps 127.3 (128.2 in NPNF?) as trans. Boulding, WSA III/20, p. 101.

"Savior! Save me!"

Σῶτερ σῶσόν με.

Healer!  Heal me!

     St. Romanos the Melodist (fl. 536–556), Kontakion 23 (sometimes 12) on Mk 5:25-34 (the woman with a hemorrhage; cf. Mt 9:20-22 & Lk 8:43-48).  See SC 114 (=Romanos le Mélode Hymnes 3), ed. Grosdidier de Matons, pp. 79-101 (Hymne de l’hémorroïsse).  This powerful refrain is worked in at the end of each of the 21 strophes of this composition.

    Image:  Evangelist Painter T'oros of Taron, The healing of the woman with a hemorrhage (c. 1300), from Thomas F. Matthews and Alice Taylor, The Armenian gospels of Gladzor:  the life of Christ illuminated (Los Angeles:  Getty Publications, 2001), plate 57 (p. 216 in the manuscript).

John the Baptist, twice Precursor, the second time to the Psalm-praying righteous (and unrighteous?) dead in Hades

     "The prophets and all the righteous [dead] prayed (constantly) to God from [Hades] with unceasing prayers, asking for deliverance from that very dolorous (and) miserable domination of the enemy and from the deepening [(πανεσπέρου)] of th[at] very gloomy darkness.  And one of them said to God, 'Out of the belly of Hades my cry, thou didst hear my voice(; thou didst cast me back into the deep, into the heart of the sea)' [(Jon 2:2-3 =Cant. 6:3)].  And the other:  'Out of the depths I cried to thee, O Lord!  Lord, hear my voice!' [(Ps 130:1)].  And the other:  'Let thy face shine, and we shall be saved!' [(Ps 80:3, 7, & 19)].   And another:  '[Thou] who art enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth!' [(Ps 80:1)].  Another:  'Stir up thy might, and come to save us!' [(Ps 80:2)].  And another:  'Let thy compassion go speedily before us, O Lord' [(Ps 79:8)].  And the other:  'Deliver my soul from deepest Hades' [(Ps 86:13)].  And another:  'O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from Hades' (Ps 80:3).  And the other:  'Thou dost not give me up to Hades' (Ps 16:10).  And another: 'Let my life rise from corruption towards thee, O Lord my God' [(Jon 2:6? =Cant. 6:7)].
     "Hearing them all, [our] very merciful [Lord] decided to proclaim his love of men not only to the dead of his time and after him, but also to those that hell possessed before his coming and who 'sat in darkness and (in) the shadow of death'.  This is why [our] God and Word on the one hand visited [on earth] the men who were in the flesh with an ensouled flesh, [and] on the other hand illuminated in hell the souls who were without flesh with his own divine and very pure soul, separated from [its] body, but not from [its] divinity," John the Baptist (who preached to the dead as well as to the living, and was thus twice precursor), having been "sent [before him] from the prison of Herod to the prison of the souls of the just and the unjust" to preach "Christ to all those of the tomb".

     Pseudo-Epiphanius, Homilia in diuini corporis sepulturam (In Sabbato magno, Homily for the Great and Holy Saturday, Ancient homily on Holy Saturday, The Lord's descent into Hades, On the burial of the divine body, Homily on the burial of Jesus, etc.) 9 & 8, as translated from the French of A. Vaillant, L’homélie d’Épiphane sur l’ensevelissement du Christ:  Texte vieux-slave, texte grec et traduction française (Zagreb:  1958), 93.  For the helpful footnotes associated with the Greek and Old Slavic (which I have not closely examined), see pp. 54-55.  Cf. Dindorf, p. 20 ll. 32 ff.  The quotations from the Psalms have been taken from (and cited in accordance with) the RSV, but modified in the direction of the French translation of Vaillant, not his Old Slavic and Greek originals.  For an online English translation of the Greek provided by Vaillant, go here.

"abundant sweetness"

"For all who fear him he has stored up abundant happiness, which he will reveal to those who hope in him, bringing it to completion when we have attained the reality which even now we possess in hope."

"seruauit enim multam dulcedinem timentibus se, aperturus et perfecturus eam sperantibus in se, cum id quod nunc in spe accepimus etiam in re acceperimus."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 260A (393/405).1 =Sermon 8.1.4 on the octave of Easter =sermo a Denis editus 8.1 =Miscellanea Augostiniana 1 (1930), p. 36, ll. 1-2, as trans. Liturgy of the hours.  =WSA III/7, trans. Hill, p. 187:

You see, he has kept in store abundant sweetness for those who fear him, and he is going to open it up and complete it for those who hope in him, when we receive in actual substance what we have now received in hope.

"two turtledoves, our soul and our flesh"

Morgan Library M.385 (1440-1460), fol. 12v

     "At the time of [his] first birth, Christ entered after forty days into the earthly Jerusalem, into the Temple, and conveyed as first-born two turtledoves to God.  But at the time of his rebirth from among the dead, too, Christ, after forty days, was taken up into the Jerusalem on high—from which he was n[ever however] separated—into the true Holy of Holies, and, as incorruptible ‘firstborn from among the dead,’ conveyed to God and to the Father [as it were] two turtledoves [without blemish], our soul and our flesh [(ὡς δύο ἀμώμους τρυγόνας τὴν ψυχήν καὶ τὴν σάρκα τήν ἡμετέραν)]. . . ."

     Pseudo-Epiphanius, Homilia in diuini corporis sepulturam (In Sabbato magno, Homily for the Great and Holy Saturday, Ancient homily on Holy Saturday, The Lord's descent into Hades, On the burial of the divine body, Homily on the burial of Jesus, etc.) 3, as translated from the French of A. Vaillant, L’homélie d’Épiphane sur l’ensevelissement du Christ:  Texte vieux-slave, texte grec et traduction française (Zagreb:  1958), 87.  The Greek (presumably of Dindorf (p. 13, ll. 3 ff.) or PG 43 (Petau)) is given at p. 31 ll. 13 ff.  In the next line, Pseudo-Epiphanius distinguishes intriguingly between such claims considered as "[articles] of faith" (which, apparently, they aren't) on the one hand and "[figures] of rhetorique" on the other (μυθικῶς . . . οὐ πιστῶς).  "For just as Christ was born of a Virgin the bolts of [whose] virginity [were] marked with a[n unbroken] seal, so the rebirth of Christ took place with the seals of the tomb unbroken."  For an online English translation of the Greek provided by Vaillant, go here.

Not just the just?

British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius C VI (c. 1050), f.14

"in which [Spirit] he went and preached [(ἐκήρυξεν)] to the spirits in prison [(τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν)], who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark....

"this is why the gospel was preached [(εὐηγγελίσθη)] even to the dead [(νεκροῖς)], that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God."

     1 Pet 3:19-20, 4:6, RSV.

"our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality"

Morgan Library M.803, fol. 68v

"This is something amazing and unheard of! It was not we who actually died, were buried and rose again. We only did these things symbolically, but we have been saved in actual fact. It is Christ who was crucified, who was buried and who rose again, and all this has been attributed to us. We share in his sufferings symbolically and gain salvation in reality. What boundless love for men! Christ’s undefiled hands were pierced by the nails; he suffered the pain. I experience no pain, no anguish, yet by the share that I have in his sufferings he freely grants me salvation."

     St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 20.5 =Mystagogical catechesis 2.5, as trans. Liturgy of the hours for the Office of readings for Thursday within the octave of Easter.  =PG 33, col. 1081, SC .  The NPNF translation is a bit easier to map onto the Greek:

O strange and inconceivable thing! we did not really die, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again; but our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality [(ἀλλ' ἐν εἰπόνι ἡ μίμησις, ἐν ἀληθείᾳ δὲ ἡ σωτηρία)].  Christ was actually crucified, and actually buried, and truly rose again; and all these things He has freely bestowed upon us, that we, sharing His sufferings by imitation, might gain salvation in reality [(ἵνα τῇ μιμήσει τῶν παθημάτων αὐτοῦ κοινωνήσαντες, ἀληθείά τὴν σωτηρίαν κερδήσωμεν)].  O surpassing loving-kindness!  Christ received nails in His undefiled hands and feet, and suffered anguish; while on me without pain or toil by the fellowship of His suffering He freely bestows salvation.

Crux fidelis

Sankt-Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 391 (late 10th cent.), p. 62

". . . when Adam first offended, | Eating that forbidden fruit, | Not all hopes of glory ended | With the serpent at the root: | Broken nature would be mended | By a second tree and shoot."

     "Crux fidelis," current Roman missal, Friday of the Passion, as very loosely paraphrased by Michael Hodgetts and then appropriated by the ICEL (according to a number of pages on the Internet, most of whose commentators seem to be pretty unhappy with this "translation").  But "Crux fidelis" as reproduced in the Missale

• [Stanza 8:]  Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis, Nulla talem silva profert, flore, fronde, germine! Dulce lignum dulci clavo dulce pondus sustinens!
• [Stanza 1:]  Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis, Et super crucis tropaeo dic triumphum nobilem, Qualiter Redemptor orbis immolatus vicerit.
• [Stanza 2:]  De parentis protoplasti fraude factor condolens, Quando pomi noxialis morte morsu corruit, Ipse lignum tunc notavit, damna ligni ut solveret.
• [Stanza 3:]  Hoc opus nostrae salutis ordo depoposcerat, Multiformis perditoris arte ut artem falleret, Et medelam ferret inde, hostis unde laeserat.
• [Stanza 4:]  Quando venit ergo sacri plenitudo temporis, Missus est ab arce Patris Natus, orbis conditor, Atque ventre virginali carne factus prodiit.
• [Stanza 5:]  Vagit infans inter arta conditus praesepia, Membra pannis involuta Virgo Mater alligat, Et manus pedesque et crura stricta cingit fascia.
• [Stanza 6:]  Lustra sex qui iam peracta tempus implens corporis, se volente, natus ad hoc, passioni deditus, agnus in crucis levatur immolandus stipite.
• [Stanza 7:]  En acetum, fel, arundo, sputa, clavi, lancea; Mite corpus perforatur, sanguis, unda profluit; Terra, pontus, astra, mundus quo lavantur flumine!
• [Stanza 9:]  Flecte ramos, arbor alta, tensa laxa viscera, Et rigor lentescat ille, quem dedit nativitas, Ut superni membra Regis miti tendas stipite.
• [Stanza 10:]  Sola digna tu fuisti ferre saecli pretium Atque portum praeparare nauta mundo naufrago, Quem sacer cruor perunxit fusus Agni corpore.

is basically Fortunatus' 6th-century "Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis" only very slightly rearranged.  Though the last stanza in the Missale,

• Aequa Patri Filioque, inclito Paraclito, Sempiterna sit beatae Trinitati gloria; cuius alma nos redemit atque servat gratia. Amen,

corresponds only very, very roughly to the various versions of Stanza 14 given at Analecta hymnica 50 (1907):  71-63 (no. 66).  The edition ed. F. Leo at MGH Auct. Ant. 4.1 (1881), pp. 27-28 (no. II.3) offers only the first ten above.  I have not compared the rest of the Latin of the current Missale Romanum, taken from here, with that in the two critical editions just named.

Also, why not simply forgive? Cur Deus homo?

"formerly, when nothing at all existed, only a nod and an act of will was needed for the creation of the universe.  But when the human being had once been made, and necessity required the healing, not for things that were not [(τὰ μὴ ὄντα, as in 1 Cor 1:28)], but for things that had come to be, it followed that the healer and Savior had to come among those who had already been created, to heal what existed. . . .  For it was not non-existent things [(τὰ οὐκ ὄντα)] that needed salvation, so that a command alone would have sufficed, but the human being, already in existence, who was corrupted and perishing."

     St. Athanasius, On the incarnation 44, trans. John Behr (Popular patristics series 44a (Yonkers, NY:  St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 145, 147).

"as true man . . . and as true God"

Source below

"It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord.  For as true man he wept for Lazarus his friend and as eternal God [he] raised him from the tomb, just as, taking pity on the human race, he leads us by sacred mysteries to new life.  Through him the host of Angels adores your majesty and rejoices in your presence for ever.  May our voices, we pray, join with theirs in one chorus of exultant praise, as we acclaim:  Holy. . . ."

"Vere dignum et iustum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere: Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus: per Christum Dominum nostrum. Ipse enim verus homo Lazarum flevit amicum, et Deus aeternus e tumulo suscitavit, qui, humani generis miseratus, ad novam vitam sacris mysteriis nos adducit. Per quem maiestatem tuam adorat exercitus Angelorum, ante conspectum tuum in aeternitate laetantium. Cum quibus et nostras voces ut admitti iubeas, deprecamur, socia exsultatione dicentes: Sanctus. . . ."

     Preface for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, current Roman Missal =Corpus praefationum no. 526 (CCSL 161A, pp. 146-147, and 161B, pp. 258-259).  A new composition patterned loosely upon Corpus praefationum no. 942 (CCSL 161C, p. 290, and 161D, p. 451), present in the the 9th (?)-century Supplement to the (Gregorian) Hadrianum as no. 1573 (ed. Deshusses, vol. 1, p. 517-518):

. . . Qui per humilitatem adsumptae humanitatis lazarum fleuit, per diuinitatis potentiam uitae reddidit, genus quoque humanum quadrifida peccatorum mole obrutum ad uitam reducit. . . .
. . . Qui per humilitatem assumptae humanitatis Lazarum flevit, per divinitatis potentiam vitae reddidit, genusque humanum quadrifida peccatorum mole obrutum, ad vitam reducit. . . .

. . . [He] who by the lowliness of [his] assumed humanity wept for Lazarus, by the power of [his] divinity restored him to life, and humankind buried under the quadripartite mass of sins led back to life. . . .

     More on this "quadrifida peccatorum moles":  French:  "une masse quadruple des péchés".

     Image:  Evangelist Painter, The raising of Lazarus (c. 1300), from Thomas F. Matthews and Alice Taylor, The Armenian gospels of Gladzor:  the life of Christ illuminated (Los Angeles:  Getty Publications, 2001), plate 57.

"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.