My case is null and void.
I have nothing to say.
At best I have my weak excuses,
At worst I have my lies.
And all the words against me lie
Pinned up to the church’s wall;
Every word the satan breaths
Says of me what is true:
That there is not in this world
Gold enough for me to pay
Or ink-pots full enough to blot
The copy book and let me go;
No years, decades, millennia
Of purgatory can make me clean;
The sins that pierce my ears at night –
They know the depths of me.
Yet in the book of life I see
This entry made beside my name:
That all the righteousness of God
Has been ascribed somehow to me;
And all the debts, the judgments passed,
Have been transcribed beside the name
Of Jesus Christ, the perfect one,
My shame transferred to Him.
My case is null and void, and yet
His blood blots out the copy book
Where all my lies, excuses and
Deeds of death stand rendered clean.
The Consolations of Writing 