not reckon up the particulars, as the errors of our senses, understandings,
consciences, judgments, wills, affections, desires, actions, and
occurrences. The whole man in nature is like a tree nipped at root, which
brings forth worm-eaten fruits. The whole man in life is like an
instrument out of tune, which jars at every stroke. If we cannot understand
them, certainly they are very many.— Robert Abbot, 1646.
Verse 12. "Who can understand his errors?" If a man repent not until
he have made confession of all his sins in the ear of his ghostly father, if
a man cannot have absolution of his sins until his sins be told by tale and
number in the priest's ear; in that, as David saith, none can understand,
much less, then, utter all his sins: Delicta quis intelligat? "Who can
understand his sins?" In that David of himself complaineth elsewhere how
that his "sins are overflowed his head, and as a heavy burden do depress
him" (Psalm 38:4); alas! shall not a man by this doctrine be utterly driven
from repentance? Though they have gone about something to make plasters for
their sores, of confession or attrition to assuage their pain, bidding a man
to hope well of his contrition, though it be not so full as required, and of
his confession, though he have not numbered all his sins, if so be that he
do so much as in him lieth: dearly beloved, in that there is none but that
herein he is guilty (for who doth as much as he may?) trow ye that this
plaster is not like salt for sore eyes? Yes, undoubtedly, when they have
done all they can for the appeasing of consciences in these points, this is
the sum, that we yet should hope well, but yet so hope that we must stand in
a mammering (Hesitating) and doubting whether our sins be forgiven. For to
believe remissionem peccatorum, that is to be certain of "forgiveness of
sins," as our creed teacheth us, they count it a presumption. Oh,
abomination! and that not only herein, but in all their pennace as they
paint it.— John Bradford (Martyr), 1510-1555.
Verse 12. "Who can understand his errors?" By "errors" he means his
unwitting and inconsiderate mistakes. There are sins, some of which are
committed when the sun shines— i.e., with light and knowledge; and
then, as it is with colours when the sun shines, you may see them; so these,
a man can see, and know, and confess them particularly to be transgressions.
There are other sins which are committed either in the times of ignorance,
or else (if there be knowledge), yet with unobservance. Either of these may
be so heaped up in the particular number of them, that as a man did when he
did commit them, take no notice of them; so now, after the commission, if he
should take the brightest candle to search all the records of his soul, yet
many of them would escape his notice. And, indeed, this is a great part of
our misery, that we cannot understand all our debts. We can easily see too
many, yet many more lie, as it were, dead and out of sight. To sin is one
great misery, and then to forget our sins is a misery too. If in repentance
we could set the battle in array, point to every individual sin in the true
and particular times of acting and re-acting, oh, how would our hearts be
more broken with shame and sorrow, and how would we adore the richness of
the treasure of mercy which must have a multitude in it to pardon the
multitude of our infinite errors and sins. But this is the comfort; though
we cannot understand every particular sin, or time of sinning, yet if we be
not idle to search and cast over the books, and if we be heartily grieved
for these sins which we have found out, and can by true repentance turn from
them unto God, and by faith unto the blood of Jesus Christ, I say that God,
who knows our sins better than we can know them, and who understands the
true intentions and dispositions of the heart—that if it did see the
unknown sins it would be answerably carried against them—he will for his
own mercy sake forgive them, and he, too, will not remember them.
Nevertheless, though David saith, "Who can understand his errors?" as the
prophet Jeremiah spake also, "The heart of man is desperately wicked, who
can know it?" yet must we bestir ourselves at heaven to get more and more
heavenly light, to find out more and more of our sinnings. So the Lord can
search the heart; and, though we shall never be able to find out all our
sins which we have committed, yet it is proper and beneficial for us to find
out yet more sins than yet we do know. And you shall find these in your own
experience; that as soon as ever grace entered your hearts, you saw sin in
another way than you ever saw it before; yea, and the more grace hath
traversed and increased in the soul, the more full discoveries hath it made
of sins. It hath shown new sins as it were; new sins, not for their being,
not as if they were not in the heart and life before, but for their evidence
and our apprehension. We do now see such wages and such inclinations to be
sinful which we did not think to be so before. As physic brings those
humours which had their residence before now more to the sense of the
patient, or as the sun makes open the motes of dust which were in the room
before, so doth the light of the word discover more corruption.— Obadiah Sedgwick.
Verse 12. "Who can understand his errors?" Who can tell how oft he
offendeth? No man. The hairs of a man's head may be told, the stars appear
in multitudes, yet some have undertaken to reckon them; but no arithmetic
can number our sins. Before we can recount a thousand we shall commit ten
thousand more; and so rather multiply by addition than divide by
subtraction; there is no possibility of numeration. Like Hydra's head,
while we are cutting off twenty by repentance, we find a hundred more grown
up. It is just, then, that infinite sorrows shall follow infinite sins.— Thomas Adams.
Verse 12. "Cleanse thou me from secret faults." It is the desire of a
holy person to be cleansed, not only from public, but also from private and
secret sins. Romans 7:24. "O wretched man (saith Paul), who shall deliver
me?" Why, O blessed apostle! what is it that holds thee? What is it that
molests thee? Thy life, thou sayest, was unblamable before thy conversion,
and since thy conversion. Philippians 3. Thou hast exercised thyself to
have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men. Acts
24:16. And yet thou criest out, "O wretched man," and yet thou complainest,
"Who shall deliver me?" Verily, brethren, it was not sin abroad, but at
home: it was not sin without, but at this time sin within; it was not Paul's
sinning with man, but Paul's sinning within Paul: oh! that "law of his
members warring (secretly within him) against the law of his mind;" this,
this made that holy man so to cry out, so to complain. As Rebekah was weary
of her life, not as we read for any foreign disquietments, but because of
domestic troubles: "The daughters of Heth" within the house made her "weary
of her life;" so the private and secret birth of corruption within Paul—
the workings of that—that was the cause of his trouble, that was the
ground of his exclamation and desires, "Who shall deliver me?" I remember
that the same Paul adviseth the Ephesians as "to put off the former
conversation" so "to put on the renewed spirit of the mind" (Ephesians 4:22,
23); intimating that there are sins lurking within as well as sins walking
without; and that true Christians must not only sweep the door, but wash the
chamber; my meaning is, not only come off from the sins which lie open in
the conversation, but also labour to be cleansed from sin and sinning which
remain secret and hidden in the spirit and inward disposition.— Obadiah Sedgwick.
Verse 12. "Cleanse thou me from secret faults." Learn to see thy
spots. Many have unknown sins, as a man may have a mole on his back and
himself never know it. Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults. But have we
not spots whereof we are not ignorant? In diseases sometimes nature is
strong enough to put forth spots, and there she cries to us by these outward
declarations that we are sick. Sometimes she cannot do it but by the force
of cordials. Sometimes conscience of herself shows us our sins; sometimes
she cannot but by medicines, arguments that convince us out of the holy
word. Some can see, and will not, as Balaam; some would see, and cannot, as
the eunuch; some neither will nor can, as Pharaoh; some both can and will,
as David. . . . We have many spots which God does not hear from us,
because we see them not in ourselves. Who will acknowledge that error,
whereof he does not know himself guilty? The sight of sins is a great
happiness, for it causeth an ingenuous confession.— Thomas Adams.
Verse 12. "Cleanse thou me from secret faults." The law of the Lord is
so holy that forgiveness must be prayed for, even for hidden sins.
( Note —This was a principal text of the Reformers against the auricular
confession of the Roman Catholics.)— T. C. Barth's "Bible Manual." 1865.
Verse 12. "Secret faults." Sins may be termed "secret" either, 1.
When they are coloured and disguised —though they do fly abroad, yet
not under that name, but apparelled with some semblance of virtues. Cyprian
complains of such tricks in his second epistle, which is to Donatus. 2.
When they are kept off from the stage of the world; they are like fire in
the chimney; though you do not see it, yet it burns. So many a person, like
those in Ezekiel, "commit abominations in secret"—that is, so as the
public eye is not upon them. He is sinful, and acts it with the greatest
vileness; all the difference betwixt another sinner and him is this—that
he is, and the other saith he is, a sinner. Just as 'twixt a book shut and
a book opened; that which is shut hath the same lines and words, but the
other being opened every man may see and read them. 3. When they are kept,
not only from the public eye, but from any mortal eye; that is, the carnal
eye of him who commits the sins sees them not; he doth, indeed, see them
with the eye of conscience, but not with the eye of natural sense. Even
those persons with whom he doth have converse, and who highly commend the
frame of his ways, cannot yet see the secret discoursings and actings of sin
in his mind and heart. For, brethren, all the actings of sin are not
without, they are not visible; but there are some, yes, the most dangerous
actings within the soul, where corruption lies as a fountain and root. The
heart of man is a scheme of wickedness; nay, a man saith that in his heart
which he dares not speak with his tongue, and his thought will do that which
his hands dare not to execute. Well, then, sin may be called "secret"
when it is sin, and acted as sin, even there, where none but God and
conscience can see. Methinks sin is like a candle in a lantern, where the
shining is first within and then bursting out at the windows; or like evils
and ulcerous humours, which are scabs and scurvy stuff, first within the
skin, and afterwards they break out to the view on the outside. So it is
with sin; it is a malignant humour and a fretting leprosy, diffusing itself
into several secret acts and workings within the mind, and then it breaks
abroad and dares adventure the practice of itself to the eye of the world;
and be it that it may never see the light, that it may be like a child born
and buried in the womb, yet as that child is a man, a true man there
closeted in that hidden frame of nature, so sin is truly sin, though it
never gets out beyond the womb which did conceive and enliven it.— Obadiah Sedgwick.
Verse 12. "Secret faults." "Secret sins" are more dangerous to the
person in some respects than open sins. For a man doth, by his art of
sinning, deprive himself of the help of his sinfulness. Like him who will
carry his wound covered, or who bleeds inwardly, help comes not in because
the danger is not descried or known. If a man's sin breaks out there is a
minister at hand, a friend near, and others to reprove, to warn, to direct;
but when he is the artificer of his lusts, he bars himself of all public
remedy, and takes great order and care to damn his soul, by covering his
"secret sins" with some plausible varnish which may beget a good opinion
in others of his ways. A man does by his secrecy give the reins unto
corruption: the mind is fed all the day long either with sinful
contemplations or projectings, so that the very strength of the soul is
wasted and corrupted. Nay, secret actings do but heat and inflame natural
corruption. As in shouldering in a crowd, when one hath got out of the
door, two or three are ready to fall out after; so when a man hath given his
heart leave to act a secret sin, this begets a present, and quick, and
strong flame in corruption to repeat and multiply and throng out the acts.
Sinful acts are not only fruits of sin, but helps and strengths, all sinning
being more sinful by more sinning, not only in the effects but in the cause:
the spring and cause of sin will grow mad and insolent hereby, and more
corrupt; this being a truth, that if the heart gives way for one sin, it
will be ready for the next; if it will yield to bring forth once at the