EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (5)

Verse 12.—“Who can understand his errors?” After this survey of the works and word of God, he comes at last to peruse the third book, his conscience; a book which though wicked men may keep shut up, and naturally do not love to look in to it, yet will one day be laid open before the great tribunal in the view of the whole world, to the justifying of God when he judges, and to impenitent sinners’ eternal confusion. And what finds he here? A foul, blurred copy that he is puzzled how to read; “who,” says he, “can understand his errors?” Those notions which God had with his own hand imprinted upon conscience in legible characters, are partly defaced and slurred with scribble and interlinings of “secret faults;” partly obliterated and quite razed out with capital crimes, “presumptuous sins.” And yet this manuscript cannot be so abused, but it will still give in evidence for God; there being no argument in the world that can with more force extort an acknowledgment of God from any man’s conscience than the conviction of guilt itself labours under. For the sinner cannot but know he has transgressed a law, and he finds within him, if he is not past all sense, such apprehensions that though at present he “walk in the ways of his heart and in the sight of his eyes” (as the wise man ironically advises the young man to do, Ecc. xi. 9), yet he knows (as the same wise man there from his own experience tells him) that “for all these things God will bring him into judgment.” The conscience being thus convicted of sin, where there is any sense of true piety the soul will, with David, here address itself to God for pardon, that it may be “cleansed from secret faults;” and for grace, that by its restraints, and preventions, and assistances, it may be “kept back from presumptuous sins,” and if unhappily engaged, that it may be freed at least from the “dominion” of them—“Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me,” etc.—Adam Littleton.

Verse 12.—The prophet saith, “Who can understand his own faults?” No man can, but God can; therefore reason after this manner, as Saint Bernard saith: I know and am known; I know but in part, but God knows me and knows me wholly; but what I know, I know but in part. So the apostle reasons; “I know nothing of myself, yet am I not hereby justified.”

Admit that thou keepest thyself so free, and renewest thy repentance so daily that thou knowest nothing by thyself, yet mark what the apostle adds farther; “Notwithstanding, I do not judge myself I am not hereby justified, but he that judgeth me is the Lord.” This is the condition of all men; he that is infinite knows them; therefore they should not dare to judge themselves, but with the prophet David, in Psalm xix., entreat the Lord that he would cleanse them from their secret sins.—Richard Stock.

Verse 12.—“Who can understand his own errors?” None can to the depth and bottom. In this question there are two considerables:—1. A concession; 2. A confession. He makes a grant that our life is full of errors; and the Scriptures say the same, while they affirm that “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isa. liii. 6); “I have gone astray like a lost sheep” (Psa. cxix. 176); that the “house of Israel” hath “lost sheep,” Matt. x. 6. I need 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” (Psa. xxxviii. 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 is 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[11] 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 penance 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. Rom. vii. 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. Phil. iii. Thou hast exercised thyself to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men. Acts xxiv. 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” (Eph. iv. 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 sins which lie open in the conversation, but also labour to be cleansed from sins 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.