“Almighty and everlasting God, which art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving unto us that our prayer dare not presume to ask, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of English Reformation. This excerpt is “The Collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity” in The Collects of Thomas Cranmer ed. C. Frederick Berbee, Paul F.M. Zahl (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) 92.