Donne on Prayer

I have been reading some John Donne lately during my evermore frequent bouts with insomnia (is this the plight of all academics?), and I came across a couplet on prayer that I found interesting:

Hear this prayer Lord: O Lord deliver us
From trusting in those prayers, though poured out thus.


(John Donne, Litanies XIV.125-6)

I am fascinating by this prayer, since it is a prayer to deliver us from trusting in prayers--a truly paradoxical sentence.

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