From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Well, most of you will probably remember that we are engaged at the moment in considering those seven verses, the first seven verses in the 13th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, which we read at the beginning. We've been looking at this most important statement for several Friday evenings before the break of Christmas. It's an important statement for many reasons, many of which we've already discovered. It's one of those unique passages in the scripture dealing with a particular subject, and therefore it is vital that we should pay great attention to it.

It's a very contemporary statement as we've already seen, because here the apostle deals with this great question of the relationship of the Christian believer to the state in which he lives. We've already considered his view of the state. I've been trying to take these points in a logical order. The first thing is we must have a right view of the state. We have seen that many Christian people in different times, different centuries, have gone astray even over that, and thereby have produced much trouble for themselves and for the church.

So we started with that: the Christian's view of the state. Then secondly, his attitude towards it, in other words, its demands upon him and his response to those demands. We considered that in particular with regard to the question of capital punishment, and last of all, the question of pacifism. These, as you realize, are very contemporary questions, and therefore we should all be grateful to God that we have a passage of scripture such as this that gives us light and instruction about these urgent modern problems.

We come this evening to another one, and this again is a very modern one, a very relevant one, I think, at the present time. That is the whole vexed question of the relationship between the church and the state. So far, we've been considering the individual Christian in his relationship to the state. But now we've got to look at it in more general terms.

Consider the whole relationship of the state and the church as a whole. Any of you who have any interest at all in history will know that this question has played a very prominent part in the history of the Christian church. It was a very prominent question, as we shall see, at the time of the Reformation, still more so in the 17th century at the time of the Civil War and the Commonwealth and even the Restoration period.

Since then, it has often played a very important part, and our forefathers, many of them, have not only fought with regard to this matter, but some have even died on this very question. So that if we have no other interest, an interest in history should in and of itself be sufficient to arouse our interest in this great matter. But beyond that, it is our duty to be interested in it, because we shall all of us sooner or later, and soon rather than later, it seems to me, have to be taking certain decisions which will involve our view of this whole question.

What I'm referring to, of course, is what is called the ecumenical movement, which is moving so rapidly and has certain ideas with regard to the nature of the church and the relationship between the church and the state. There are those who believe that there should be one church only in every country, what they call a national or a territorial church, and that all should belong to that, and that it should have a given specific relationship to the state.

And then, of course, when you go on and begin to talk about the Church of Rome, and you've read probably in your newspapers this morning of a further indication of the rapidity of the movement in the direction of a realignment with Rome or an absorption by Rome, well, here again, you see this whole question comes up in a very acute manner. If we as Christian people and as members of Christian churches are to take an intelligent interest in these matters and above all are to register votes when the time comes for decisions in an intelligent manner, the way to do so is to study this question and to discover what exactly the teaching is with respect to it.

The moment this question is raised, the question of church and state, you will find that Romans 13:1-7 is invariably quoted, and also that passage which we've looked at several times already in the second chapter of the First Epistle of Peter. These are the ones that are quoted because they're the only ones that come anywhere near to dealing with this question. Therefore, it is all important that we should consider these verses that are before us.

How does this question of the relationship between the church and the state arise at all? There are some, as we've already seen, some Christians who don't seem to recognize this, and we've seen the fallacy of their position. But the question arises quite inevitably in this way: the church is obviously something ordained by God, but here we are told that the powers that be are also ordained of God.

So here you see something at once that makes us feel there must be a relationship. The state and the church are ordained by God. They have that in common. Very well, there must be then some sort of relationship between them. Not only that, Christian people belong to both. As Christians, we are members of the church, but as people, as individuals, we are citizens of various earthly states and kingdoms.

So we're bound to feel it in that way. You can't dissociate yourself from the state in which you live. You've got to pay taxes. You have to conform to laws and the various other things that we've already seen. Very well, then, as an individual, you belong to the church and you belong to the state. So you must be clear in your mind as to the relationship between these two things to which you belong. Not only that, the church and the state are at certain points concerned with the same questions.

Therefore, it's important that we should be aware of the grounds on which both the church and the state are interested in these same common questions. And finally, the Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the church. But not only is He the head of the church, He is the head of all things in the whole universe at the same time. I read that fifth chapter of the Book of Revelation at the beginning because it gives us an indication of that. He is the Lord of history. In many other places, we are told that He is the head over all things.

He said just before the ascension, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." At the end of Ephesians chapter one, we are told that all principalities and powers and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in heaven but on earth, all these are under Him and under His power. So He is the head of the church, and He is at the same time the head over all things in the entire cosmos. Those are the reasons for saying that there is obviously, therefore, some relationship between the church and the state.

But now, the moment you say that, you have to face the next question, which is a particular question: What then exactly is the relationship between the two? The relationship between the church and the state. This is an extremely difficult question and an extremely involved one. The history of the centuries proves that quite plainly and clearly. It's not an easy matter to handle. I've tried to simplify it as best I can.

What one can say is that in the main, there have been two chief views, two main views if you like, with regard to this whole question of the relationship between the church and the state. The first view is the one that holds that the church and the state are one. The second is that which holds that the church and the state are essentially different. It really can be boiled down to that. There are some particular views which are very difficult to classify and to place, but speaking generally, that is a very good and a very useful classification: that the church and state are one, and the other view says no, the church and state are essentially different.

Let me tell you first of all something about that view which holds that the church and the state are one. I think this is the best way of approaching the problem. There are two main ways in which we could have approached the problem. One is we could have started with an exposition of our verses and the scriptures and then proceeded to give the history. But I think it's more profitable to do it the other way around. I do that for this reason: that most people today in this discussion always start with the position as it is. So I'm going to do the same thing and try to show how the present position has ever come into being.

It's quite a good way to approach this to start with the historical development. Then we can test what has been happening through the centuries by the test of the scriptural teaching. Take this view then which says that the church and the state are one. It's a very old view, this. It is a view that goes back to the 4th century AD. It's a view that only came in at that time. In the first three centuries of the Christian church, there was nobody who taught that the church and the state were one. There was a very good reason for that.

The controlling power, the state controlling power at that time, was of course the great Roman Empire, and it was a pagan empire. So nobody obviously could possibly claim that the church and the state are one. We know that that was not the case. You see the church in the New Testament. It was just a little body, handfuls of people here and there in a great pagan society with the state and everything else against and persecuting. No one possibly in the early centuries could say that the church and the state are one.

But that event took place which has changed the entire course of history, namely the so-called conversion of the Emperor Constantine the Great, who announced that he had become a Christian somewhere roundabout 325 AD. I mustn't weary you with the details as to why he ever claimed to be a Christian. There is no doubt in my mind that his main reasons were political. But the fact is that he did announce that he'd become a Christian, and he made the Christian faith the official religion of the Roman Empire.

In other words, he took the Roman Empire with him into the Christian church. Emperors can do that sort of thing, and that is what Constantine did. Of course, there were individuals who objected, but officially, the Roman Empire became Christian. It is from that moment that this whole teaching came into being: that the church and the state are one.

Now, there are two main divisions of this teaching. There it is, that's how it came into being. He merged the two. He claimed this power which he exercised over the church and so on, and that was the position for some time. But after that, there have been two main views with regard to this unity between the church and the state. After the collapse of the great Roman Empire, the position soon developed in which you had what is the typical Roman Catholic teaching, the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church with regard to this relationship.

Their teaching is that the state is subservient to the church. That has been always the Roman Catholic teaching. The church and state are one, yes, but which is the controlling power? The Roman Catholic Church said it is the church that controls the state. This I'm pointing out is something that developed after the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. While the emperors were powerful and the state was powerful, the state dictated to the church. It was this Emperor Constantine that called various ecumenical councils of the church and was responsible for the Nicene Creed and things like that. He called the church into conference and more or less dictated what it should do.

But after the fall of the empire, the position changed, and the church arrogated unto herself the powers that previously had been exercised by the state. So the Popes, who came into being just about the same time, asserted that they had supremacy over the state. It developed in this way: the church was one, but she functioned in quite a number of countries. The countries were divided amongst nations and different governments, but the church was one, and she claimed that she had supreme authority and rule and power over all these different nations and states wherever they may have chanced to be.

Let me read you a typical statement of this Roman Catholic attitude as put forth in what is called the Fourth Council of Lateran. This is what they say: "Let the secular powers, whatever offices they may hold, be induced and admonished, and if need be, compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they desire to be accounted faithful, they should for the defense of the faith publicly set forth an oath that to the utmost of their power, they will strive to exterminate from the lands under their jurisdiction all heretics who shall be denounced by the church. But if any temporal lord, being required and admonished by the church, shall neglect to cleanse his hands of this heretical filth, let him be bound with the chain of excommunication by the metropolitan and other co-provincial bishops. And if he shall scorn to make satisfaction within a year, let this be signified to the supreme pontiff, the Pope, that henceforth he may declare his vassals absolved from their allegiance to him and may expose his lands to be occupied by the Catholics, who, having exterminated the heretics, may without contradiction possess it and preserve it in purity of faith."

Some have tried to argue that that has been put on one side, but a great Roman writer in the 17th century, Bellarmine, he put it like this: "The Pope has, in order to spiritual good, supreme power to dispose of the temporal affairs of all Christians." That is really the Roman Catholic position: that the church has control over the state, that it can dictate to the state what it should do and what it should not do, that the church, the Pope, is over all kings and emperors and rulers as that passage indicated. If these rulers don't submit to the church, they can excommunicate him and indeed, if necessary, possess his land by the sword.

That was the great Roman Catholic claim. She claimed that she had complete control and power over all the activities of men. She not only controlled their politics, she controlled their thinking, their attempts at scientific development and investigation—everything they did, the church controlled everything. As you know, the church did control and at times tried to oppose scientific development and things of that kind. But they carried it even as far as this: the Roman church claimed that the clergy of the church, the bishops of course and all others, were exempt from the general laws of the country in which they lived. Should a priest break the law of the land, he should be immune from the law. They had such power and such supremacy that they were entitled in this way to these special privileges.

But there were those who were very restive under all this and who fought against it. A fight soon began to take place from about the 11th century onwards against this claim of the Popes and the Roman church to have supreme power over the whole life of men and over every state. One of the first to engage in that fight was King Henry II of this country. You remember something about the story of Henry II and Thomas à Becket? It was partly over this matter. These national states and sovereignties, kings and others, objected to this overlordship of the church and said that the laws of the lands, the customs of the land, should be supreme, and that the clergy, as well as everybody else, should be subject to the laws of the land in which they lived. Henry II put up a tremendous fight in this respect, and he very nearly succeeded, but not quite.

Then the next great figure as far as this country is concerned who fought this particular battle was the redoubtable John Wycliffe. John Wycliffe was a kind of forerunner of the Protestant Reformers. It was amazing what that man did. There is a new book recently out about him which I think I recommended here one Friday evening, and I would commend it to you again. This was one of the things on which John Wycliffe also fought: this freedom of the people of a land from this domination by the Pope.

And of course, the man who finally did it in this country was King Henry VIII. I don't want to go into the details here again, but really the only change which Henry VIII made as regards the Reformation in his time was this: that he substituted himself for the Pope. Henry VIII never changed his beliefs. He was only interested politically, not merely in the matter of his obtaining a divorce, but his whole political view of himself and his dynasty. That's the only thing he was interested in. He died in doctrine a Roman Catholic, there is no question about that at all, but he certainly got rid of the domination of the Pope and he set himself up instead of the Pope. He arrogated to himself the powers that previously had been claimed and exercised by the Popes.

After that, of course, the same thing happened in many other countries. It's almost amusing to notice the way in which the Roman Catholic Church has been playing a kind of delaying action. She's been making agreements with these different states, trying to hold on to her power. The Pope, of course, still claims to be the head of a state. The Vatican is a state, and the Pope is the head of a state. It was on those grounds that he went and addressed the League of Nations Assembly about 15 months ago, you remember. It still regards itself as a state, but of course, it's been shorn of its power. But it's still trying to hold on to some remnant and undoubtedly waiting for an opportunity to regain the power if that is at all possible.

But by today, even Italy is no longer under the power of the Pope. He's been shut in just to that area of the Vatican and no longer dominates the life of Italy in a political sense in the way that he once did. Well, now, there is that first view, then. The essence of the view, you see, is that the church controls and dominates the life of the state in every respect.

But now we've got to look at the exact opposite of that. Remember, this is still dealing with the first view that identifies the church and the state or says that they are one. This second view, of course, is the exact opposite of the Roman view, and yet at this central point they belong together: church and state are one. What is this view called? The name that is generally given to it is Erastianism. It's given that name because the man who first stated it clearly, though others had held the view, was a man of the name of Erastus. This is a teaching which says that the church is subservient to the state. Unlike the Roman Catholic which says that the church dominates the state, this says the exact opposite: that the church is a branch of the state if you like, a servant of the state, an aspect of the state, and is under the control and the power of the state.

Now this man Erastus is quite interesting in many ways. He lived from 1524 to 1583. He was a follower of the Swiss Reformer Zwingli. He was a man who was first and foremost a professor of medicine. It's interesting to notice the number of medical men who have played a part in the history of the church. I'm sorry to have to say that it's not a very creditable record, but here it is. Erastus was a very good professor of medicine, but he was also very interested in this question of the relationship between the church and the state. He was professor of medicine at Heidelberg in Germany and also at Basel or Basel in Switzerland. It's clear I say that he was a very good doctor, a very good professor of medicine, but I can't say the same about his ideas about the church and state relationship.

There were certain people who tried to introduce the Presbyterian system into Heidelberg when he lived there, and it was in reply to that that he published his famous book, the title of which is *Theses Touching Excommunication*. This raises the whole power of who has the power to excommunicate. The essence of his teaching is this: he denies that the church has any power to make laws or decrees or to inflict pains and penalties of any kind. That was the essence of his teaching. In other words, he takes all this power which the Church of Rome had claimed for the church and he takes it all away from the church.

Here is a good statement of his position: he taught that the general government of the visible church is part of the one function of dominion entrusted to the state, that the office bearers in the Christian society as such are merely instructors or preachers of the word without any power or right to rule except what they derive from the civil magistrate, and that ecclesiastical censure and more especially excommunication is a civil punishment which the magistrate may employ the officers of the church to inflict, but which owes its force to civil authority alone.

Now that's the teaching of Erastus. You may say, "What does that got to do with us?" Well, I'll tell you in a moment what it does. In many ways, it is the teaching of the Church of England. Erastus's book hadn't been translated into English by the time of the formation of the establishment in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but his ideas had gained currency and there were many who already accepted them.

Now that is what is meant by Erastianism: that the church is subject to the state. I said at the beginning that there were difficulties at certain points, and one of the difficulties is the whole condition of the Lutheran Church. Martin Luther began by holding what I'm hoping to show you are scriptural views on this question. He believed in the complete independence of the church. Indeed, his view of the church was more or less the view of some of the Puritans who said the church is just the gathering of the saints together. That was his essential view.

But unfortunately, he was a man of his age, and he was surrounded by terrible difficulties. I'm not criticizing Luther. Luther was called of God to do one big thing, and it's very wrong of us to expect him to do everything. It's amazing that he was enabled to do what he did. But you see, he was living in an age where the relationship between the state and the church had always been most intimate under Roman Catholicism. This was the thing that they'd been brought up in for centuries, and anything else was unthinkable.

But what really deflected Luther from his true view was the so-called Peasants' Revolt and the people who became known as Anabaptists. I've already referred to them in describing to you the Christian's view of the state. These Anabaptists tended to wash their hands altogether of the state. Others then went to the other extreme and were dictating to people every detail of their lives. They were the state and were introducing a kind of theocracy. Between them, they frightened Martin Luther, and he became quite convinced that if this sort of thing went on, the Reformation would be lost completely, that this kind of thing would alienate all the rulers, the electors in different parts of what we call Germany now, and the Emperor still more, and he could see that the whole of the Reformation was going to be lost. There must be some authority somewhere.

Where was he to find it? He came to the conclusion that the only way to get authority was to turn to the civil ruler. So he did, and to that extent he became an Erastian, giving the power to the princes, the electors, the rulers, the heads of the state over the life of the church and in this matter of punishment. Now let me say this for Martin Luther, and incidentally, this is the year to say it because it is, as some of you may remember, the 450th anniversary of that famous occasion when he nailed his 95 theses to the door: he really did not believe in putting people to death for heretical views. Perhaps I shall have occasion to mention that later on. I just say it in passing.

But now, as the result of this and increasingly as the years have passed, the Lutheran Church generally speaking has become Erastian. It is the state church in places like Denmark and Norway and Sweden and Finland and various other countries and is therefore very closely akin to what we have in this country. I mention that special case because of the change that took place in Luther's thinking and in Luther's action. Now this brings me to the Church of England.

Henry VIII, as I've reminded you, claimed to be the supreme head and governor over the church as well as over the state. His son, Edward VI, claimed the same thing. His daughter, Mary I, claimed the same thing. But we come to his other daughter, Elizabeth I, and she, of course, also claimed the same thing. Now I want again to try to be fair to Elizabeth. The difficulty in that 16th century was that church and state were so intimately bound up. Politics played such a part that it was extremely difficult to separate them.

In other words, Elizabeth was constantly in danger of being attacked by Spain, which was then such a powerful country, because of her political views, because of her ecclesiastical views, and so on. So that there were these various considerations. I'm not excusing her. I don't think she can be excused, nor her bishops. But at any rate, it is our duty to be fair to them and to try to understand them as far as we can. Again, there was this fear of relaxing this hold upon the church.

So when they came to draw up the 39 Articles, of which we are hearing so much at the present time—there are many evangelicals who say that they're going to stay in the Church of England as long as the 39 Articles are not repudiated or revoked—the 37th Article in the 39 Articles reads like this: "The Queen's Majesty has the chief power in this realm of England and her other dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes does appertain. They, the princes, should rule all states and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil-doers."

That's the 37th Article in the 39 Articles. And of course, it is just a fact of history that Queen Elizabeth interfered very actively. There was a great old Archbishop called Grindal. She got rid of him because he queried all this and had Puritan tendencies. But she got him removed, and she had the power to do so. In many other respects and on many other occasions, she asserted her authority as the head of the church, the supreme head over ecclesiastical matters as well as other matters, and compelled them to do that which she desired.

Now, there was a man who came into great prominence towards the end of her reign, and he's a most important man in these matters, called Richard Hooker. He wrote a famous book called *Ecclesiastical Polity* in several volumes, and he is regarded as the authority in these matters. He taught this typical Erastian view. In his *Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity* which was published in 1594, he said, "the church and the state are one and the same society, only contemplated from two different aspects, and that the state therefore has a perfect right to legislate for the church."

The important thing is that he taught that the church and the state are one and the same society, only contemplated from two different aspects. We ought to be able to follow that. In the early part of this century when people were so interested in politics, it used to be said that the Conservative party, or that the Church of England rather, was just the Conservative party saying its prayers, and that nonconformity was the Liberal party saying its prayers. You see, you look at people politically and you look at the same people ecclesiastically. Same people, but looked at religiously or non-religiously. That was the idea: that the church and the state are one and the same society only looked at, contemplated, from two different aspects.

Now, I want to be fair again to Richard Hooker. He made it quite clear that what he taught in this way was only true as long as the head of the state was a Christian. Now this is a most fascinating subject. We can't go into it. It would take too long. But they taught the idea of what they called the "godly prince." Queen Elizabeth was a godly prince according to their view. She was a Christian and was interested in these matters. So she comes under the heading of godly prince. Hooker's case only applies when you've got a godly prince, which they claimed to have at that time.

Now unfortunately, he doesn't tell us very clearly as to what you do when you haven't got a godly prince. Since the days of Queen Elizabeth, there have been many godless princes. But unfortunately, the rules of ecclesiastical polity which he laid down have continued to be in operation whatever the character, the moral character, of the prince might chance to be. But he did say that, and we've got to be accurate in what we report. Another thing, Hooker while giving this supremacy to the sovereign, to the godly prince and to the state, would not allow the sovereign or the state to decide matters of doctrine. He wouldn't do that.

He said it was the province of the church to define doctrine, submitted to the authority of course of the state, and the state has authority and power to reject, but it hasn't power and authority according to Hooker to initiate doctrine. And another thing he said was this: he taught that bishops were not made by princes, but simply placed by them. What he meant was this: that the state, the sovereign, has the power to appoint bishops, but has not got power to consecrate them.

And that, of course, is what is still more or less the rule and in vogue. It is the state, the sovereign, through the government of the day, that decides who's to be made a bishop. But Hooker was careful to say that while the state has the right and the authority and the power to appoint bishops, it has not got the power to consecrate them. That is a power, he said, which only belongs to the church.

In other words, you see these men were good men, they were honest men. They were trying to do what they thought was the best, and they were obviously unhappy. They wanted a principle of authority. You see, when you've had a church which for 15 centuries has been dominated by the papacy, and you suddenly do away with it, there's a sort of vacuum. These men, that's the fascinating thing about the 16th century, they were all searching for a principle of authority. They felt you must have authority. This was the way that the Erastians and the Erastians in this country tried to solve the problem.

So you see, while they give the authority, they try to qualify it a bit. They do realize that the church after all is a spiritual society. So they drew that kind of distinction: that the sovereign, the state, has the power to place bishops, but not to make bishops. To appoint them, yes, but not to consecrate them. And this is still the position. As you know, the church produced a new prayer book in 1928. It was turned down by Parliament, and it's never been legally and officially in use since then. The state has that authority. It didn't initiate this, it was the church that initiated it, but the state has the power to veto it, to stop it, and it did so.

Bishops are still appointed by the crown. You read constantly in the paper about opposition to this, opposition even in the Church of England. There are those who say that the church should be disestablished, that this is a scandal, and so on: that you may have a Prime Minister who's a Jew as in the case of Disraeli, or a nonconformist or an infidel. I don't mention any names, but that still they have this legal right and authority to appoint bishops and other dignitaries in the Christian church.

Now I must just complete this bit of history and to leave it for tonight. The Church of England, you see, being established in that way, claimed its right to dictate to people as to how they should worship. There was a fight against this, of course, under Charles I, and during the period of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, this was set aside. Not completely, I'll tell you that next time God willing, but more or less.

Oliver Cromwell, whatever his faults, did more for religious tolerance and liberty in this country than anybody else. Never forget that. He was the first man to give asylum to the Jews. But in this matter of religious tolerance, he was a man well ahead of his times. That only proved to be a very brief period. Charles II came back, and you remember what happened. You remember the Act of Uniformity and the turning out of those 2,000 men in 1662 and the oppression and the various Conventicle Acts and all the rest of them that followed.

This went on until 1688, when with the coming of William and Mary, the Act of Toleration was passed, which granted full liberty of worship to all nonconformists except Roman Catholics and Unitarians. In other words, Presbyterians and Congregationalists and Baptists were given liberty of worship. In the next century, the same thing was applied to the Roman Catholics—not full emancipation until 1828, but they were given liberty of worship before that at the end of the 18th century, and the Unitarians if I remember rightly in 1813.

Well, now, there is just a general review for you of this first view of the relationship between the church and the state which would have us believe that the church and the state are one. The first Roman Catholic view says: church over state. The second, the Erastian, says: state over church. Both of them have been modified in the passage of the years, and there is no doubt at all but that during this century yet further changes are going to take place. We've got to leave it at that tonight because our time has gone. But next time we hope to go on to consider the view which says that the church and the state are essentially different. We'll look at that historically, and then we'll evaluate both the views in the light of the teaching of the scripture. Let us pray.

O Lord, our God, we again come unto Thee, and we realize as we do so that we are but men as those who have gone before us, and that they, even the greatest of them, were men of like passions with ourselves. We see, O Lord, how involved we become in the world and its affairs, and how we allow these things even to influence our thinking about spiritual matters. O Lord, history has humbled us in Thy holy sight, and we realize that we are fallible as all who have gone before us.

But we do thank Thee for the history of the past, because we can learn from it. We pray Thee therefore, O God, to keep us humble under Thine almighty hand, to give us grace to be patient with one another and with these varying ideas. But above all, O God, we pray Thee to grant us that enlightenment which will enable us to understand the teaching of Thy word, lest we in our day and generation may repeat some of the errors of the past.

O God, give us, we pray Thee, a concern about these things, not merely with our minds, but a concern for Thy glory and Thy praise. Lord, look upon us, keep Thy mighty hand upon us, and lead us on in these days of momentous decisions, in this turning point of history in which it is pleased Thee to put us into this world. And Thou, O Lord, hear us in this our prayer and pardon us and forgive us all. And now, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now, this night and evermore. Amen.