And when he had opened the book, the four living creatures, and the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints:
Glossa Ordinaria
They fell down before the Lamb. They thought humble things of themselves, in that they imitate him; whence there follows. Having every one harps. The mortifications of vices and of concupiscences. In a harp there is wood and strings: by the wood, the cross of Christ; by the strings, the flesh of the saints, which is stretched upon the wood, while, rendering the same sound amid divers torments, they imitate the cross of Christ.
English is machine-translated from the public-domain Latin (Glossa Ordinaria, Migne, Patrologia Latina 113-114, 1852; digital text from Corpus Corporum, mlat.uzh.ch), since no public-domain English translation exists. It is not a scholarly translation. Please report errors.