Devotional 100: The Law and the Regenerate: They Walk in It Freely

The Confession Read

Although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly; discovering also the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts, and lives; so as, examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against sin, together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of his obedience. It is likewise of use to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin: and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve; and what afflictions, in this life, they may expect for them, although freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law. The promises of it, in like manner, show them God's approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof: although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works. So as, a man's doing good, and refraining from evil, because the law encourageth to the one, and deterreth from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law; and, not under grace.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 19, Section 6

Introduction

A young man sat across from his minister, the worn leather of his Bible open to Romans. "I do not understand," he said. "The apostle tells me I am not under the law but under grace. Yet the same apostle calls the law holy and just and good. Which is it? Am I bound to the commandments or am I free from them?" His confusion was not feigned, nor was it born of a desire to excuse sin. It was the honest bewilderment of a believer who had heard enough gospel to know that Christ fulfilled the law on his behalf, but had not yet grasped what place the law continues to occupy in the life of the redeemed. That young man's question has echoed through every generation of the church. It troubled the apostolic congregations, as Paul's letters bear witness. It reached a climax in mid-seventeenth-century England, when the antinomian movement openly taught that believers were entirely released from the moral law, that the Ten Commandments had no more claim on the Christian conscience than the dietary regulations of Moses. The Westminster Divines, confronting this teaching head-on, had already insisted in Section 5 that the moral law forever binds all, justified and unjustified alike, and that Christ in the gospel strengthens rather than dissolves that obligation. But they were not content to leave the matter there. Having established that the law continues to bind believers, they turned, in Section 6, to the warmer and more pastoral question: how does the law serve the believer? What good does it do for those who are already safe in Christ? The answer they give rewards careful reading. Far from being a relic the believer can disregard, the moral law proves itself to be an instrument of daily spiritual usefulness, a tool in the hands of the Holy Spirit for advancing the very sanctification that grace has begun. It informs, directs, convicts, humbles, restrains, warns, and encourages. It is not the master of the believer but his counselor; not his judge but his guide; not the ground of his acceptance but the pattern of his gratitude. To lose the law would be to lose one of God's appointed means for growing in grace and in the knowledge of Christ.

Scripture Foundation

The central biblical distinction that governs this entire section is drawn from the apostle Paul, who in Romans 6:14-15 writes: "For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid." The phrase hypo nomon, "under law," describes a particular relationship to the law of God, one in which the law stands over a person as a covenant of works, demanding perfect obedience as the condition of life and pronouncing condemnation upon every failure. From this relationship the believer has been definitively delivered through union with Christ, who was "made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law" (Galatians 4:4-5). But notice what Paul does immediately after announcing this freedom. He poses a question, and the very fact that he must pose it tells us that the misunderstanding was already abroad: "Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace?" His answer is the strongest negative at his disposal: mē genoito, "God forbid," "may it never be." Freedom from the law as a covenant of works is not, and can never be, freedom to sin. The logic of grace does not run in the direction of lawlessness; it runs in the direction of a new and glad obedience. The reason for this becomes clearer when we examine Romans 7:7. "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." Here Paul isolates one of the law's essential functions for the believer: the discovery of sin. The Greek verb egnōn, "I had not known," does not mean that Paul was entirely unaware of desire before encountering the Decalogue. It means that he had not recognized epithymia, covetous desire, as the moral evil that it truly is. The law names and exposes sin, bringing it out of the shadows of the heart into the clear light of God's righteous standard. For the unbeliever, this exposure serves to leave him without excuse. But for the believer, the same exposure serves a very different purpose: it drives him back to Christ, deepening his conviction of remaining corruption, his humiliation before a holy God, and his hatred of the sin that required the death of his Savior. If Romans explains the law's diagnostic work, the Psalms reveal its constructive power. Psalm 19:7-8 unfolds the beauty of God's law in language too rich to take in at a single reading: "The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes." Every clause in these verses names a distinct benefit that the law confers. It converts or revives the soul, restoring spiritual vitality to the weary. It makes the simple wise, imparting prudence and discernment to those who lack them. It rejoices the heart, producing not drudgery but delight. It enlightens the eyes, giving clarity and perspective in a world darkened by sin. David, who wrote these words, was no legalist seeking to climb to heaven by commandment-keeping. He was a justified sinner who had tasted the sweetness of God's revealed will and found it more desirable than gold and sweeter than honey. The practical, daily usefulness of the law is nowhere more vividly portrayed than in Psalm 119:9-11. "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." The verb translated "cleanse" is the Hebrew zakah, to be clear, pure, or upright. The psalmist asks a deeply practical question for any believer: how does one maintain moral purity in a world saturated with temptation? His answer is immediate and unhesitating: by ordering one's life according to God's word, by internalizing the commandments so deeply that they become the instinctive response to temptation. The law hidden in the heart functions as a bulwark against sin. This is precisely the restraining use that the Confession describes: the law "forbids sin," and the believer who cherishes those prohibitions is fortified against the assaults of the world, the flesh, and the devil. There remains the critical pastoral question, however: can a believer who orders his life by the law, who does good because the law encourages and refrains from evil because the law deters, be charged with remaining under the law as a covenant? The apostle addresses this obliquely in Galatians 5:13-14: "For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The liberty of the gospel is not an unstructured freedom in which every man does what is right in his own eyes. It is a liberty ordered by love, and love itself is ordered by the law. The same apostle who thundered against the Judaizers for imposing circumcision now quotes Leviticus as the summary of Christian ethics. The law is not the enemy of grace but its form and shape when grace is at work in a human heart. The believer who keeps the commandments out of love for the God who gave them is not falling back into legalism. He is living out the very freedom that Christ purchased.

What the Divines Meant

Having asserted in Section 5 that the law binds believers, the Divines turn here to the more intimate question of why that binding is a blessing. Section 6 is, in many ways, the pastoral application of the principle established in Section 5. It answers the believer who, having accepted that he is not free to disregard the law, wonders what good the law can do for someone who is already justified. The answer, the Divines insist, is that the law serves the believer in multiple ways, corresponding to his ongoing need for guidance, conviction, restraint, and encouragement. The opening clause sets the theological framework within which everything that follows must be understood: "Although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or condemned." This is the non-negotiable starting point. The believer's standing before God is not determined by his personal obedience to the law. He is justified by faith alone, through the imputed righteousness of Christ, and there is therefore no condemnation for him. The law does not stand over him as a covenant whose terms he must fulfill to secure acquittal at the final judgment. All of this is accomplished already in Christ. But having stated this with absolute clarity, the Divines immediately add their great "yet": "yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others." The law is not merely a relic the believer may tolerate; it is a positive instrument of spiritual good, a gift the Father gives his children for their growth in holiness. The first use the Divines enumerate is the law as "a rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty." The word "informing" is significant. The Greek kanōn, from which we derive "canon," originally denoted a measuring rod, a straight edge by which a builder ensured that his work was true. The law serves this function in the moral life. It provides an objective, external standard by which the believer can measure his conduct, his motives, and his priorities. Without such a standard, the Christian life would be governed by subjective impressions, cultural fashions, and the unreliable compass of fallen intuition. The law says plainly, "Thus saith the Lord." It does not whisper suggestions; it declares the Creator's will. And the believer, far from resenting this clarity, receives it as the sheep receives the shepherd's voice. The next function is diagnostic: the law discovers "the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts, and lives." The word "pollutions" is deliberately strong. It suggests not mere imperfections or mistakes but defilements, stains that corrupt what was meant to be clean. The law acts upon the believer's conscience as a mirror upon the face, showing him what he could not otherwise see. A man may go through his day supposing his heart to be in tolerable condition, but when he reads, "Thou shalt not covet," the tenth commandment reaches into the citadel of his inward life and exposes desires he had managed to ignore. When he reads, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," the first commandment shows him how far short he falls of this fundamental obligation of his creaturehood. This exposure is painful, and the Divines do not soften that pain. But they insist that it serves a sanctifying purpose. The chain of spiritual benefits that flows from this diagnostic work is carefully ordered. The law's exposure of sin leads, first, to "further conviction of" sin, a deepening awareness that sin is real, personal, and grievous. It leads, second, to "humiliation for" sin, the casting down of pride, the acknowledgment that even the best obedience of the best saint is riddled with imperfection. It leads, third, to "hatred against sin", not mere regret over consequences but a growing repugnance toward the thing itself, a true loathing of what God loathes. And it leads, fourth and climactically, to "a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ, and the perfection of his obedience." This is the goal toward which every preceding step has been moving. The law's exposure of sin is never an end in itself. It is designed to drive the believer, again and again, out of himself and into the arms of the Savior. The saint who thinks he has outgrown his need of Christ is a saint on the verge of a great fall. The law prevents that delusion by keeping the reality of remaining sin ever before his eyes, and Christ ever before his faith. The second broad category of uses concerns the law's restraining function: "It is likewise of use to the regenerate, to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin." Even the regenerate believer carries within him what the Confession calls "remnants of corruption," the lingering presence of indwelling sin that, though dethroned, is not yet destroyed. The law serves as a check upon these corruptions. The commandment "Thou shalt not" stands as a posted boundary, a clear line the believer knows he must not cross. When temptation solicits and the flesh inclines, the explicit prohibition of the law sounds in the conscience like a warning bell. It arrests the soul and recalls it to its allegiance. Connected to this restraining use is the law's function in revealing what sin deserves: "the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve; and what afflictions, in this life, they may expect for them, although freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law." The Divines are careful here to distinguish between the curse of the law and its threatenings. The curse, the sentence of eternal condemnation, has been borne by Christ and no longer hangs over the believer. But the threatenings that reveal the just deserts of sin retain their instructional value. The believer who reads, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," does not fear that death as his eternal destiny, but he learns from it the true gravity of his transgressions. He learns that his sin merits temporal chastisements, fatherly disciplines that God in his wisdom may appoint for his correction. This is not the terror of a condemned criminal but the sober realism of a beloved child who knows that his Father does not overlook sin in the household. Finally, the law has an encouraging function: "The promises of it, in like manner, show them God's approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof: although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works." The law is more than prohibition and threat; it is also promise. The fifth commandment, to take one example, carries the promise of long life in the land. The second commandment speaks of mercy shown to thousands who love God and keep his commandments. These promises, the Divines explain, reveal something precious: God is pleased with the obedience of his children. Not because that obedience earns anything, the blessings being "not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works," but because a father delights to see his child walk in the way of righteousness. This is not merit but encouragement, the smile of a Father who loves to bless what his own grace has produced. The concluding sentence of the section is a pastorally perceptive statement: "So as, a man's doing good, and refraining from evil, because the law encourageth to the one, and deterreth from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law; and, not under grace." The Divines anticipate the tender conscience that, having been taught that believers are not under law but under grace, might worry that any motive drawn from the law, any desire for promised blessing or any fear of threatened chastisement, is a relapse into legalism. The Divines answer, in effect: no, those motives are not legalism. They are the very motives God himself has built into his law for the use of his children. A believer who obeys, in part, because he knows that obedience pleases God and that disobedience invites fatherly correction, is not thereby proving himself graceless. He is proving himself a son, responding to the incentives his Father has lovingly provided.

Theological Depth

Anthony Burgess, whose Vindiciae Legis, preached at St. Lawrence Jewry in London and published in 1646, was a direct response to the antinomian crisis, provides a thorough treatment of the law's continuing uses. Burgess distinguishes between the law as a covenant and the law as a rule with a clarity that directly informs the Confession's language. "The law may be considered two ways," he writes, "either as a covenant, or as a rule. In the former sense, Christ is the end of it; in the latter, it is a perpetual direction to the people of God." The believer who confuses these two relations will inevitably fall into one of two errors: he will either try to climb back onto the treadmill of the covenant of works, measuring his acceptance by his performance, or he will throw the law aside entirely and drift into a lawlessness that makes no distinction between liberty and license. Burgess adds a further nuance that illuminates the Confession's discussion of the law's promises. When the believer reads a promise attached to obedience, he asks not "What have I merited?" but "What has my Father graciously pledged?" The frame has shifted from desert to gift, from wages to inheritance. The difference is not merely verbal; it transforms the entire emotional texture of obedience. The man who obeys to earn stands in anxiety, perpetually uncertain whether his accounting will balance. The man who obeys as a son, attending to his Father's promises, stands in grateful hope. His failures do not threaten his standing, and his successes do not inflate his pride. Samuel Bolton, in The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, published in the same period, explores the psychology of the law's diagnostic work with pastoral insight. "The law," he writes, "is a glass to reveal our imperfections in duty." But he immediately adds that this mirror does something else, something the believer needs just as urgently: it shows him his need of Christ's blood to wash those spots away. The law never shows a man his sin without also, by implication, pointing him to the remedy. For the sin it reveals is the very sin that Christ came to bear. The believer's hatred of sin grows in stages: the law first shows him sin's nature, then its consequences, then its opposition to the holiness of God, and finally, and decisively, its cost. Nothing will make a man hate sin so much as seeing what it cost Jesus Christ. The law, by exposing sin in its true character, prepares the heart to grasp the magnitude of what the cross accomplished. The believer who most clearly sees the law's demands is the believer who most deeply treasures the Savior who met them. Owen addresses the law's restraining use in his treatise on the mortification of sin, and his treatment helps us understand why the Divines included the threatenings of the law among its continuing uses. Owen insists that the believer must bring the law to bear upon his particular sins, not generically but specifically. It is not enough to say, "I am a sinner." The law compels us to say, "I am a liar. I am covetous. I am proud. I am impatient." Only when sin is named can it be mortified. The law's threatenings ("the wages of sin is death," "the soul that sinneth, it shall die") serve to unmask sin's true character. Sin always presents itself to the mind as a trifle, a small indulgence, a pardonable weakness. The law's threatenings answer that seduction by declaring what sin actually is: an offense against infinite majesty that merits infinite penalty. Owen does not counsel the believer to dwell upon the threatenings as though they applied to his eternal state. That would be to forget the gospel. But he does counsel the believer to let the threatenings teach him the true weight of sin, so that he will not treat lightly what cost his Savior so dearly. James Fisher, in his Exposition of the Shorter Catechism, explains the law's use for the regenerate in a way that closely parallels the Confession's structure. The law, he teaches, serves to excite believers to gratitude and thankfulness to Christ for fulfilling it as a covenant, and to direct their conformity to it, in heart and life, as the rule of their obedience. This use comes to the believer, Fisher makes clear, in the hand of the Mediator. The law does not come to the believer raw and unmediated, as it came to Israel at Sinai. It comes through Christ, whose obedience has satisfied its demands and whose blood has removed its curse. The law speaks to the believer, but it speaks in a changed tone. It no longer thunders condemnation; it offers fatherly direction. The voice is the same voice, but the relationship has been transformed. This theme, that the believer receives the law through the Mediator, is essential for understanding why the law's uses are never a return to bondage. The law does not stand between the believer and Christ as a barrier; it comes from Christ as a gift. To use the law as though it were a ladder to heaven is to misuse it. To receive the law from Christ's hand as a guide for the path of gratitude is to use it lawfully. The distinction is not in the content of the law but in the hand that delivers it and the heart that receives it.

Puritan Application

First, learn to love the law's diagnostic work. Every believer carries within him a persistent inclination toward self-deception. We minimize our faults, excuse our failures, and construct narratives in which we appear more righteous than we are. The law dismantles these comfortable fictions, holding up the perfect standard of divine holiness and asking, without flattery, whether we measure up. The answer, every time, is that we fall short, and every honest engagement with the law deepens our conviction of that shortfall. This may sound like a recipe for perpetual discouragement, but the Puritans, and the Confession after them, insist that it produces the opposite effect. Conviction of sin, when it leads to Christ, is the path to comfort, not despair. The believer who has most thoroughly seen his sin is the believer who has most deeply drunk of grace. Do not shrink from the law's uncomfortable questions. Let them do their appointed work. The mirror that shows you your spots also sends you to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. Consider how this works in the ordinary course of the Christian life. You rise in the morning intending to walk in holiness, and by noon you have spoken a sharp word, indulged a resentful thought, or neglected a known duty. The law names these things for what they are: transgressions of God's righteous will. Your conscience, instructed by the law, smites you. Now you have a choice. You can suppress the conviction, shrug it off as inevitable weakness, and carry on as though nothing happened. Or you can let the law do its full work: acknowledge the sin for what it is, trace it to its root in remaining corruption, feel the shame and sorrow that genuine repentance brings, and flee to Christ for fresh pardon and cleansing. The first path leads to a calloused conscience and a stunted Christian life. The second path leads to deeper communion with Christ and a growing hatred of the sin that grieves him. The law is the instrument that opens the second path. To neglect the law's diagnostic work is to remain spiritually shallow; to embrace it is to grow deep. Second, make the law your counselor in particular cases. It is not enough to have a general acquaintance with the Ten Commandments. The believer who would grow in practical holiness must bring the specific commandments to bear on specific situations. When you are tempted to shade the truth in a business dealing, the ninth commandment speaks directly to your circumstance. When you feel envy stirring at a neighbor's prosperity, the tenth commandment names that motion of the heart for what it is. When the Lord's Day approaches and worldly entertainments beckon, the fourth commandment calls you to rest and worship. The law is not a vague atmosphere of religious sentiment; it is a precise instrument, fitted to the particular contours of human life. Use it that way. Read the commandments not as historical artifacts but as the living voice of your Father, speaking to the decisions you will make today. This requires effort. It means studying the commandments in their full breadth, learning both what each one forbids and what it positively requires. The Westminster Larger Catechism, with its exhaustive exposition of the duties required and the sins forbidden in each commandment, is a practical aid. It means pausing, in the moment of decision, to ask not merely "Is this lawful?" but "What does my Father's law require of me here?" And it means cultivating the habit of meditating on the law, as the psalmist did, so that it dwells richly in the mind and rises naturally when temptation knocks. Third, let the law's threatenings teach you the gravity of sin without casting you into despair. This is a delicate balance, and many believers have stumbled on one side or the other. Some have so shielded themselves from the law's severe language ("the wages of sin is death," "cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things") that they have lost the capacity to take sin seriously. They confess sin lightly because they have forgotten what sin deserves. Others have so dwelt upon the threatenings that they have fallen prey to a morbid introspection, perpetually questioning whether they are truly in Christ because they continue to feel the motions of sin. The Confession's teaching corrects both errors. The threatenings are retained ("what even their sins deserve"), but the curse is removed ("freed from the curse thereof threatened in the law"). The believer can look squarely at what his sin merits without despairing, because he knows that the merit has been borne by another. The threatenings teach him the weight of what Christ carried to the cross. Far from undermining assurance, this deepens it, for the more clearly he sees what he deserved, the more glorious appears the grace that has delivered him. Fourth, receive the law's promises as genuine encouragements to obedience without lapsing into legalism. The believer who reads, "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee," should take that promise seriously. God has attached a temporal blessing to filial obedience, and children who honor their parents may expect, in the ordinary course of providence, to experience that blessing. The believer who reads that God shows mercy to thousands of them that love him and keep his commandments may take heart that his faltering but sincere obedience is not unnoticed in heaven. These promises do not function as wages. They are not paychecks, as though the believer could present his obedience at the counter and demand his due. They are fatherly encouragements, the kind of rewards a parent offers a child not to establish desert but to express delight. Use them that way. Let the law's promises spur you to diligence without tempting you to pride. Let them remind you that your Father takes pleasure in the faltering steps of his children, not because the steps are perfect but because they are steps toward home. Fifth, never separate the law's use from the Spirit's work. The Confession has already taught, in an earlier chapter, that the inward illumination of the Spirit is necessary for the saving understanding of what Scripture reveals. The same principle applies to the law's practical usefulness. The law, apart from the Spirit's application, is a dead letter. It can inform the mind but cannot transform the heart. It can command the will but cannot enable the will to obey. The believer who takes up the law as a self-improvement project, attempting to conform his life to its precepts by sheer determination, will find himself frustrated and eventually defeated. But the believer who reads the law in dependence on the Spirit, who prays with the psalmist, "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law," will find the law becoming not a burden but a delight. The Spirit uses the law as his instrument. He convicts through it, illumines through it, guides through it, and empowers through it. To neglect the law is to deprive the Spirit of his chosen tool. To use the law without the Spirit is to attempt a spiritual work with carnal resources. But to bring the law and the Spirit together, to study the commandments on one's knees, is to place oneself in the path where God has promised to bless.

Prayer

Most holy and righteous God, whose law is the perfect expression of thy holy will, we thank thee that thou hast not left us to wander in darkness, guessing at what pleases thee. Thou hast spoken. Thou hast given us thy commandments, not as a burden to crush us but as a light to guide us, not as a ladder to climb to heaven but as a path to walk in grateful love. We confess, O Lord, that we have too often resented thy law. We have felt its demands as intrusions upon our liberty when they were in truth the guardrails of our safety. We have avoided its searching gaze when we should have welcomed its diagnosis. We have treated sin lightly when thy law declares its true weight. Forgive us, we pray, for the sake of thy dear Son, who bore the law's curse in our stead and fulfilled its precepts on our behalf. Teach us, O Spirit of grace, to use thy law as thou hast intended. Let it be a mirror that shows us our spots, and then let it drive us, not to despair, but to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. Let it be a rule that directs our steps, making the path of obedience plain before our feet. Let it be a restraint upon our remaining corruptions, forbidding the sin to which our flesh inclines. Let its threatenings teach us the true gravity of every transgression, so that we never treat lightly what cost our Savior his life. And let its promises encourage us, not as wages we have earned but as tokens of a Father's delight in the faltering obedience of his children. Grant us, we beseech thee, a deepening love for thy law, not the grudging compliance of the slave but the glad response of the son. Write its precepts upon our hearts, so that we obey not from compulsion but from inward delight, finding thy service to be perfect freedom. And when we fall, as we daily do, let the law's exposure of our sin send us not inward to self-reproach but outward to Christ, in whom all the law's demands are satisfied and all its promises are yes and amen. Keep us, Lord, from the two great errors that have shipwrecked so many souls. Keep us from legalism, the folly of seeking to establish our own righteousness by commandment-keeping. And keep us from antinomianism, the folly of imagining that grace makes obedience optional. Let us stand in the narrow and blessed path between them: justified freely by faith alone, and sanctified daily by the Spirit's application of the law that thou hast given for our good. For thy church in every land, we ask a recovery of holy living, not the anxious moralism of those who have forgotten the gospel, nor the careless license of those who have forgotten the law, but the joyful, Spirit-wrought conformity to thy will that is the birthright of every child of God. Bring us at last to that blessed state where the law shall be no longer an external command but the very atmosphere of perfected holiness, and where we shall serve thee without weariness or wandering, world without end. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Spirit be all honour and glory, now and evermore. Amen.