Laudator Temporis Acti

E.K. Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928; rpt. New York: Dover Press, 1957), p. 78, with note on p. 300:

He also declared it the function of a bishop to teach. All his writings indicate this desire to live up to his part, to play the game into which he had been hurried against his will. He is a modest teacher. "When I was rushed from the bench of justice into the priesthood," he says, "I began to teach what I had not learned myself. — The result is that I now must learn and teach at the same time."¹¹ This confession of Ambrose's must be made by any teacher of any subject at any stage in his career. Sometimes, at the outset, one makes the confession with a certain glee, as if it involved a kind of crime against society which one committed without detection. Later, one perceives that it is the normal condition of the teacher and the vitality of his art.

11 (78). De Officiis Ministrorum, I, 1, 4 (Migne, XVI, 24-25).

The Latin:

ego enim raptus de tribunalibus atque administrationis infulis ad sacerdotium, docere vos coepi quod ipse non didici. itaque factum est, ut prius docere inciperem, quam discere. discendum igitur mihi simul et docendum est, quoniam non vacavit ante discere.