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O Lord, we thy people coming into thy presence at this time, we are constrained and forced to acknowledge and confess that thy mercies shown to us have been many and exceeding great. As we were by nature, so we might have been still, strangers from God and Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, without the covenant, and so having no right to the promises made in thy word; and living here without hope of life everlasting, and being in danger of thine everlasting wrath. And therefore it has been thy great mercy to gather us within the skirts of thy covenant, and within the compass of thy love; and has made us who were no people to be thy people, and to exalt us above other nations in the world, who were in every way more wealthy and flourishing in outward things than we were, and yet that thou shouldst put this great honor upon us to make us thy people and children. What a great love, and what a great mercy is this, that thou shouldst count more of us than of others; that thou shouldst enter in a covenant with us, and make promises to us; and that thou shouldst put us in any hope of continuing thy comfortable presence to remain here among us; and to enter us in the estate of grace; and that thou shouldst give us faith to believe, and so hope of life eternal afterwards! Lord, our dull minds cannot be wakened nor stirred up to apprehend of these things; the little things in the world hold us very busy, we cannot think upon these things that are above, and are sent down to us from thence. And howsoever that we have not considered of it aright, yet we ourselves have gone far on in our duty to thee; for we confessed ourselves before the world, and we have sworn and subscribed to it; and as we have received a seal thereof, so we have added one. Certainly our condemnation must be great, if so be that there be not a change in us for all this, but to the worse rather than to the better, if our heart still remain hard, our life lewd, and our conversation altogether carnal. We think ourselves to be something aye till we meet with the hour of temptation, and then we prove to be that same and no other than we were before; the least temptation we meet with shows to the world that we are as little renewed as we were at any time. And this indeed is a very bad token in us, when for all that thou doest to us, and all that we ourselves do to thee, yet we find no further strength against our corruptions, nor to do good. Lord, we beseech thee to enlarge our hearts and minds to consider of thy dealing towards us, and of our dealing with thee: and we beseech thee, O Lord, to pardon us, that since we have renewed our covenant with thee, we have not walked as it becomes us; and we beseech thee to humble us for it: that so we being humbled, thou mayest pardon us, and thou mayest make up what is deficient in us. It is a comfortable thing for thy people when they see themselves empty, and yet they know where there is fullness for them, and when they see themselves crooked, that they know where to be made straight again. Lord, we beseech thee to fill our souls out of thy fullness, and rectify our crooked wills and affections; and when we have gotten any wakening, and by that we are made to walk in thy ways, Lord, let us not return again. We have in times bygone been careless observers both of thy word and of thy works; make us in time coming to be more diligent observers of them. And because it is only thy Spirit that does this, we beseech thee to send down thy Spirit upon us, that so we having thy Spirit, we may have all things that pertain to life and godliness. And because the nearer we draw to thee, the nearer will temptations draw to us, and will set the sorer upon us, Lord, we beseech thee to deliver us from them; and albeit that they overtake us, yet let us not be overcome by them. Lord, let us not wander in our hearts from thee, and so provoke thy wrath against us: we had never so great need not to turn thy grace into wantonness as we have now. And because all of us are in thy debt for that which we have received, and we are also in thy danger, of thy judgments to come upon us, Lord, give us grace to strive to walk in thy ways, and to cry for mercy, that so thy judgments may be kept off us, and we may be preserved in the hour of temptation; that so the Lord may delight to dwell among us, in his own ordinances; which we crave in the name, and for the merits, etc.