A treatise on comforting afflicted consciences - The Digital Puritan

;AFFLICTED CONSCIENCES. 149out at doors ; if thou suffer but one of them to lurk in anycorner undiscovered and not turned out, he will suffice tocut thy throat and take away thy treasure. Crying out ofone capital sin only is not sufficient, we must confess andforsake all, if we look to find mercy (Prov. xxviii, 13).And yet here I would have no true penitent dejected ormistake ;the bare omission of some particular sins in thiscase is not ever damnable. For we must know, that if aman deal truly with his own heart in a sincere acknowledgment,confession, and repentance for discovered and knownsins (and he ought to labour by clearing the eye of naturalconscience and industrious inspection into God's pure law,to know as many as may be), and for all those that comeinto his mind, when he sets himself apart solemnly to humbleand afflict h's soul before God ( and he ought to rememberas many as he can possibly) ; 1 say, if so, then for secretand unknown sins, which are committed in weakness andignorance, the Lord accepteth a general confession, as wesee in David's practice, " Who can understand his errors'?Cleanse thou me from secret faults " (Psalm xix, 12). Sinsthere are many, and that in the best men, which are notonly unnoted of others and free from the world's observation,but even unknown to a man's own self, and invisibleto the watchfullest eye of the most waking consciencewhich notwithstanding are clearly subject to the search ofGod's all-seeing eye, and to the censure of his pure majesty." For hell and destruction are before the Lord, how muchmore the most secret ways of the sons of men ? " Sins thereare also, which even in the zealous exercise and holy workof repentance may not come into the consideration and remembranceof one truly penitent, which if he could recoverinto his memory, he would heartily and with much indignationacknowledge, bewail, and detest : so unnumbered arethe cursed bye-paths of men's crooked ways. But for boththese sorts of sins I must say thus much for the comfort ofthe true convert ; that both those unknown sins which hecommits of ignorance, if he truly repent for all his knownsins, and labour with sincerity and zeal for further illuminationof conscience and fuller revelation of every corruptpassage both in heart and life, in judgment and practice ;and those sins of knowledge also, which came not into hismind, if with diligence and without dissimulation, withhearty prayer and best intention of spirit, he endeavour torecover them into his memory, that he might also mourufor and mortify them with the rest, carrying ever in hisheart this resolution, that as any sin shall be discovered tohis conscience, or return into his mind, he will abominateO 3