ℹ️ This corpus has no morphological tagging. Glosses are matched by word form against a dictionary — a match does not prove it is the same word (an inflected form can coincide with another word’s lemma). Verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
Meanwhile, the imperial decrees to be dictated against the faith of the fathers were committed to Benevolus, who then presided over the secretariat of records. But he, to whom the sacred faith had been venerable from his cradle, refused, saying that he could not utter impious words nor speak against God. Then indeed, lest the queen's undertaking should seem to be frustrated, a loftier honor was promised him if he would fulfill what was enjoined. But he, who desired to be more noble in faith than in honors: 「Why,」 he said, 「do you promise me a higher rank as the wage of impiety? Take away this very rank which I have: only let my conscience of the faith remain to me unharmed.」 Saying this, he cast his belt of office before the feet of those who were commanding impiety.
Ambrose, however, against the queen's fury, defended himself neither with hand nor weapon, but, placed beneath the altar in fastings and continual vigils, by his supplications he prepared God as a defender for himself and the Church. And while wicked Justina was contriving these things at length with diverse machinations and assaults, Maximus—who longed to strip himself of the infamy of a tyrant and to show himself a legitimate prince—by a letter sent protested against the impious undertaking, declaring that the faith of God was being assailed and the statutes of the catholic Church overthrown; and amid these things he began to draw near to Italy. When Justina learned this, pressed at once by the enemy and by the conscience of her impiety, she was turned to flight with her son, and was the first to receive the exiles which she had been preparing for the priests of God.