Well, having 24 chapters of Wheelock's under my belt, I decided to try my hand at translating an actual sentence from an actual author of Latin text, hooray for me! My interests are mainly in Renaissance-era scientific works rather than the classics or ecclesiastical works. This sentence is from the introduction to Johannes Trithemius's Steganographia, which describes the art of hiding messages inside of messages. Today, steganography is used to hide, for example, messages in JPEGs on the Intarwebz.
Trithemius's Steganography was written around 1500, but not published until around 1600. Trithemius didn't publish it during his lifetime due to the magical-sounding methods, which he was afraid would get him in trouble. Remember, even simple substitution ciphers were ooh-ah high technology back then

Anyway. Here's my sentence, and my attempt at translation, for which I have a bunch of questions. The sentence itself is rather large, so let's just focus on the first segment (in bold)
Diuus etiam et inter nostros eruditissimus Hieronymus tot pene
in Apocalypsi Ioannis mysteria latere affirmat, quot verba Graecorum
Sapientes non parvae apud suos aestimationis praetereo: nostrosque et
Philosophos et Poetas doctissimos intermitto, qui fabulis conscribendis
operam navantes, aliud imperitis, atque aliud eruditis homonib. unius
narrationis serie sagaci adinventione tradiderunt.
My stab at this phrase:
The blessed, and furthermore among our most learned, Hieronymus asserts that so many provisions lie hidden in the Apocalypse of John...
Q: Where does mysteria fit? I broke down what I think the phrases are as follows:
1. NOM phrase: Diuus etiam et inter nostros eruditissimus Hieronymus
2. NOM or ACC, plural, neuter: tot pene -- I'm pretty sure pene is declined from penum, not penis, in which case this would be an ABL singular masculine, and also wouldn't make a whole lot of contextual sense!
3. ABL prepositional phrase: in Apocalypsi Ioannis
4. NOM or ACC, plural, neuter: mysteria
5. Infinitive, present: latere
6. Verb, present 3rd person singular: affirmat
I'm pretty sure that the subject of the verb at (6) is (1). Also, I'm positive that the infinitive at (5) is an indirect statement, thus "Hieronymus asserts that..."
So now I'm looking for the ACC subject of the infinitive at (5), and I have two choices at (2) or (4). This is what is throwing me off. Also, I'm not even sure of my translation of (2), "so many provisions".
Does anyone have an idea?
Thanks,
--Rob