As We Are So Miserable

Grant, Almighty God, that as we are so miserable as soon as you withdraw your favor from us--O, grant that we may deeply feel this conviction, and thus learn to be humble before you, and to hate our selves, and that we may not in the mean time deceive ourselves by such allurements as commonly prevail, to put our hope in creatures or in this world, but raise our minds upwards to you, and fix our hearts on you, and never doubt that when you embrace us with your paternal love, nothing shall be wanting to us. And in the meantime, may we suppliantly flee to your mercy, and with true and genuine confession, acknowledge this to be our only protection--that you deign to receive us into favor, and to abolish our sins, into which we not only daily fall, but by which we also deserve eternal death, so that we may daily rise through your free pardon, till at length our Redeemer, Christ your Son, shall appear to us from heaven. Amen.

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