I feel, O my God, 

continually this sad change which sin has made in me, 

not so much destroying my faculties, as perverting them; 

I have not lost the use of them, but the rectitude of them. 

I am no more weary of sinning, as a swift stream of running; 

the same weight of sin that hinders me from running the race which is set before me, 

hurries me to evil 

and makes me, through the impulses of Satan,

to gather strength by an accessory impression. 

In the birth of sin 

I am like the Hebrew women, lively and quick of delivery; 

but in the bringing forth of whatever is good, 

like the slow Egyptian that needs the aid of the midwife. 

I beg of thee holy Lord to heal my distress by thy grace, 

And to renew me in the spirit of my mind 

That I may run the way of thy commandments, 

When thou hast enlarged my heart.

-William Spurstowe