Philip Doddridge: Piercing Heaven – Puritan’s Prayers

Great eternal Original, Author of all created beings and happiness: I adore you—you who have made us capable of faith. You who have bestowed this dignity and eloquence on our nature, that it may be taught to say, “Where is God our Maker?”

But I lament that degeneracy has spread over the whole human race, which has turned our glory into shame. The forgetfulness of God, unnatural as it is, has become a common and universal disease.

Holy Father, we know that only your presence and teaching can reclaim your wandering children. Impress a sense of divine things on the heart, and make that sense lasting and effectual.

From you proceed all good purposes and desires—and this desire, above all, of spreading wisdom, piety, and happiness in this world.

Though we are sunk in such deep apostasy, your infinite mercy has not utterly forsaken us.

Amen.