Oh Lord, we do fear that selfishness even enters into our most holy things; we mar and spoil our prayers, and preachings, and teachings, with the unwashed hands with which we go about them. Oh, that you would make us clean, we ask you. While we thus pray to you, we do also know that believing in Christ we are clean; we thank you we do not doubt his justifying power.
While we are now crying to him to be sanctified, may we not doubt his power to sanctify; but while crying, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death,” as well we may; we do nevertheless shout exultingly, “Thanks be unto God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.”