"Look down upon me with tenderness and mercy"

Today, at Anecdotal Evidence:

On this date, March 28, in 1762, Johnson wrote a prayer in his notebook. His wife, Elizabeth Johnson, known as Tetty, had died ten years earlier and he still mourned her. .... He begins his prayer conventionally enough: “God grant that I may from this day,” followed by such requests as “Return to my studies” and “Live temperately.” Then Johnson adds:

O God, Giver and Preserver of all life, by whose power I was created, and by whose providence I am sustained, look down upon me [with] tenderness and mercy, grant that I may not have been created to be finally destroyed, that I may not be preserved to add wickedness to wickedness; but may so repent me of my sins, and so order my life to come, that when I shall be called hence like the wife whom Thou hast taken from me, I may dye in peace and in thy favour, and be received into thine everlasting kingdom through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ thine only Son our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

Anecdotal Evidence: `Vivid Expressions of an Intuitive Judgment'