O eternal and most gracious God, who, though thou have suffered us to
destroy ourselves, and hast not given us the power of reparation in
ourselves, hast yet afforded us such means of reparation as may easily
and familiarly be compassed by us, prosper, I humbly beseech thee, this
means of bodily assistance in this thy ordinary creature, and prosper
thy means of spiritual assistance in thy holy ordinances. And as thou
hast carried this thy creature, the dove, through all thy ways through
nature, and made it naturally proper to conduce medicinally to our
bodily health, through the law, and made it a sacrifice for sin there,
and through the gospel, and made it, and thy Spirit in it, a witness of
thy Son's baptism there, so carry it, and the qualities of it, home to
my soul, and imprint there that simplicity, that mildness, that
harmlessness, which thou hast imprinted by nature in this creature. That
so all vapours of all disobedience to thee, being subdued under my
feet, I may, in the power and triumph of thy Son, tread victoriously
upon my grave, and trample upon the lion and dragon[182] that lie under
it to devour me. Thou, O Lord, by the prophet, callest the dove the
_dove of the valleys_, but promisest that the _dove of the valleys shall
be upon the mountain_.[183] As thou hast laid me low in this valley of
sickness, so low as that I am made fit for that question asked in the
field of bones, _Son of man, can these bones live?_[184] so, in thy good
time, carry me up to these mountains of which even in this valley thou
affordest me a prospect, the mountain where thou dwellest, the holy
hill, unto which none can ascend _but he that hath clean hands_, which
none can have but by that one and that strong way of making them clean,
in the blood of thy Son Christ Jesus. Amen.