The essential qualities of devotional eloquence, conciseness, majestic simplicity, pathetic earnestness of supplication, sobered by a profound reverence, are common between the translations and the originals.

But in the subordinate graces of diction the originals must be allowed to be far inferior to the translations.

And the reason is obvious.

The technical phraseology of Christianity did not become a part of the Latin language till that language had passed the age of maturity and was sinking into barbarism.

But the technical phraseology of Christianity was found in the Anglosaxon and in the Norman French, long before the union of those two dialects had, produced a third dialect superior to either.