No Health in Us?

One of the crown jewels of the Book of Common Prayer is the General Confession in Morning and Evening Prayer.¹John N. Matthews Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame. In theological terms, it offers a clear-eyed depiction of what Christians believe is the human condition: we are prone to curve inward away from God, we need his forgiveness. In literary terms, it is a superbly balanced composition that is full of memorable phrases, such as “erred and strayed like lost sheep” and “the devices and desires of our own hearts.”²For brief rhetorical analysis of the General Confession, see Alan Jacobs, The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography (2013) 61-64. The sources of this short prayer are at least