O Lord our God, how excellent is your name in all the World!

Your glorious majesty is excellent, but that brings me nothing;

    your justice is excellent, but that brings me nothing.

It is your mercy that must do me good,

    and therefore your other excellencies I adore,

    but this I invocate.

To invoke your justice, I dare not;

    your glory, I cannot,

    but your mercy, I both dare and can.

 

For why should I not dare, when fear gives me boldness?

How should I not be able when weakness gives me strength?

Why should I not dare, when you invite me to it?

How should I not be able when you draw me to it?

 

Do you invite me, and I shall not come?

Do you draw me, and I shall draw back?

Can there be a patron so powerful as you?

Can there be a beggar so dejected as myself?

 

Whom, then, is it more fit to ask for mercy than you, O God,

    who are the God of mercy?

And for whom is it more fit to ask for mercy than for me

    who am a creature of misery?

 

Richard Baxter, 1615 – 1691, English Puritan

 

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Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
  according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.