Since We Are Too Secure and Torpid in Our Sins

Grant, Almighty God, that since we are too secure and torpid in our sins, your dread majesty may come to our minds, to humble us, and to remove our fear, that we may learn anxiously to seek reconciliation through Christ, and so abhor ourselves for our sins, that you may then be prepared to receive us: and that unbelief may not shut the door against us, enable us to regard you to be such as you have revealed yourself to be, and to acknowledge that you are not like us, but the fountain of all mercy, that we may thus be led to entertain a firm hope of salvation, and that, relying on the Mediator, your only-begotten Son, we may know him as the throne of grace, full of compassion and mercy. O grant, that we may thus come to you, that through him we may certainly know that you are our Father, so that the covenant you have made with us may never fail through our fault, even this, that we are your people, because you have once adopted us in your only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

(a prayer of John Calvin, in his Commentary on Hosea, translated into English in 1846 and updated by me into modern English)