Description: This setting of a trinitarian text by Prosper of Aquitaine is the 28th selection in the 1601 edition of Hassler's Sacri concentus; in the revised 1612 edition it is number 32.
Original text and translations
Latin text
Æternus vere est solus Deus, omnicreator:
vita in se vivens permanet esse quod est.
Hoc Pater, hoc verbum Patris, hoc est Spiritus almus,
quorum natura est una, eademque fides.
Non cœptum aut auctum, non hic mutabile quidquam est,
quod subeat leges temporis, aut numeri.
Virtus, præteritis prior ulteriorque futuris,
nil recipit varium, nil habet occiduum.
Nam rerum, quas ut voluit sapientia fecit,
multis vita quidem est præstita perpetua.
Sed quodcumque potest esse amplius aut minus esse,
quodam fine ipsum quod fuerat moritur.
Sic nihil æternum quod commutabile factum est.
Et quod cuncta super, semper idem Deus est.
English translation
Truly eternal is only God, creator of everything:
what has life remains alive through him,
He is Father, he is word of the Father, he is Holy Spirit:
faith in which is that their nature is one and the same.
It is neither begotten nor made, nor in any way mutable:
he is outside of the laws of time or creation.
Virtue, he is before all past and after all future,
nothing in him ever changes, nor knows he death.
In fact to many things, which he created with wisdom as he intended,
life is given in perpetual renewal.
But whatever may be, large or small,
at its end must meet death, whatever it may have been.
Thus nothing that can change is made eternal.
And above it all, forever is God.