Preces Quotidianae
A Humble Confession of Sin
The sinner acknowledges his transgressions before God, describing his lowly state as a worm and dust, and confessing his bondage to Satan and vice.
I have sinned, Lord, against You, Lord, against You, In Your sight, I have not revered Your presence. I am by nature rottenness and a worm, a worthless speck of dust,✦ By sin, a slave of Satan;✦1 By vice, viler than hell.
The Multiplying of Sins and Their Hardening
The sinner laments the multitude of his sins, likening them to the hairs of his head, and traces how they multiplied and hardened into habit, supported by scriptural allusions.
I have sinned. My sins are many—more than the hairs of my head.2 Manifold in kind and in place—on every green field, under every leafy tree—repeated again and again; as a spring pours out water, so the heart pours out sins. Jeremiah3 6. 7. Until they hardened into habit—scarlet. Isaiah4 1. 18. sold. 1 Kings5 21. 25.✦ Romans. 7.✦ 14. Until they became nature itself—the leopard's spots, the Ethiopian's skin; Jer.✦ 13.✦ 23.
The Sinner Becomes Sin
The confession reaches its climax: the sinner has become sin itself, not merely a sinner, and concludes with a final acknowledgment of sin.
Until he himself is not a sinner,✦ but sin.6 I have sinned. Sins. Isaiah, hi.7 8. Broad,8
Read the original Latin
Peccavi, Domine, Tibi, Domine, Tibi,
In oculis Tuis non reveritus conspectum Tuum,
Ego natura putredo et vermis, vilis pulvisculus,
Peccato, mancipium Satanz;
Vitio, inferno vilor.
Peccavi Peccata numero multa, stille supra capillos capitis. Specie multiplicia, Multiplicia locis, super omnem campum viridem, subter omnem arborem frondosam, Multoties, iterata multis vicibus, Quas fons aquas, Sic cor peccata; Jer. vi. 7. Donec im habitum coccinea, 7s. 1. 18. venundata; 1 Reg.
xxi. 25. Rom. vn. 14. Donee in naturam Pardi maculz, JEthiopis pellis; Jer. xiu. 23.
Donec ipse non peccator,
sed peccatum.
Peccavi Peccata Is, hi . 8, τ Lata,
Scripture echoes
- ↩Job.25.6;Ps.22.6 — how much less, then, is man—a maggot—and the son of man—a worm! Ps.22.6 — To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
- ↩John.8.34;Rom.6.16-Rom.6.17;2Tim.2.26 — Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.' Rom.6.16 — Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? Rom.6.17 — But thanks be to God that, though you were slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart the pattern of teaching to which you were committed. 2Tim.2.26 — and that they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been captured by him to do his will.
- ↩1Kgs.21.25 — There was no one like Ahab, who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the LORD, whom his wife Jezebel incited.
- ↩Rom.7.14 — For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold under sin.
- ↩Jer.13.23 — Can the Cushite change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good, you who are accustomed to doing evil.
- ↩Jer.13.23 — Can the Cushite change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good, you who are accustomed to doing evil.
- ↩Jer.13.23 — Can the Cushite change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good, you who are accustomed to doing evil.
Notes
- 1 ↩Source form Satanz is nonstandard; read as genitive of Satan (Satanae/Satanas).
- 2 ↩Source 'stille' is opaque/corrupt; rendered from the nearest biblical confessional sense (sins more than the hairs of the head).
- 3 ↩'Quas fons aquas' is elliptical/possibly quasi/sicut; rendered as a fountain-waters parallel to the heart pouring out sins.
- 4 ↩Read 'im' as 'in' and '7s.' as 'Is.' (Isaiah); 'Donec in habitum coccinea' taken as telegraphic confession: sins until habit, then scarlet.
- 5 ↩Feminine 'venundata' may imply anima/self; kept as elliptical 'sold' to match telegraphic source. '1 Reg.' rendered 1 Kings because the continuation (xxi. 25 in next section) is the Ahab sold-himself verse.
- 6 ↩With the preceding clause (Donec ipse non peccator), this reads as the intensifying contrast non…sed: not merely a sinner, but sin itself. This section is only the second half of that clause.
- 7 ↩Reading capitalized 'Is' as the book label Isaiah (same correction as nearby '7s.' → Is./Isaiah in this confession sequence). Lowercase 'hi' is left as an opaque chapter/verse fragment; it is not secure Latin prose.
- 8 ↩'8' is rendered as a bare verse/numeral fragment in the citation apparatus. Greek 'τ' is treated as residual OCR/typesetting noise (possibly from πλάτος, 'breadth'), not as a Latin word. 'Lata' is the clear lexical head: feminine 'broad/wide,' continuing the nearby dimensional catalog of sins (Dura, Longa, Profunda, etc.).
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