s month, the children of Israel were
assembled with fasting and with sackclothes, and earth upon them. Verse
2d, And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all strangers, and
stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their fathers.
Verse 3d, And they stood up in their place, and read in the book of the
law of the Lord their God, one fourth part of the day, and another
fourth part they confessed and worshipped the Lord their God." Acts xix.
18--"And many that believed came, and confessed, and showed their
deeds."

These Scripture examples, as we conceive, do sufficiently evince, that
such public confession, for the substance of it, is not only expedient,
but also necessary for such as would renew their covenant with God. As
for some circumstances of the manner thereof, neither are we to
vindicate them, nor can they justly be charged upon the whole of those
who made those confessions; far less upon the minister, who, though he
exhorted such as were guilty of scandalous defection, to glorify God by
a public confession, yet obliged none thereunto _authoritatively_: and
such as confessed the sin of their thoughts, or any other sins not
scandalous or offensive to others; he exhorted to be serious in mourning
over these things secretly before the Lord; but withal told them that
these things are not the subject matter of such a public acknowledgment.
Such as were unconcerned in their confessions, and seemed rather to do
it from the examples of others, than from a real and deep sense of their
guiltiness before God (as it must not be dissembled, there were too
many,) he exhorted to attain a sense of the things confessed, and posed
their consciences, whether they were convinced of what they pretended to
confess. If any was so ignorant and weak in their apprehensions of the
nature of right repentance and justification, as to put their
acknowledgment of sin in the room of Christ's satisfaction, and to rely
thereupon for peace and acceptance with God, as it is alleged they did,
it must be owned that they wofully erred in a matter of the highest
consequence: but to affix this either upon all in general, or upon any
particular person by name, is against the law of charity, and a judging
of the heart, which is not obvious to man, but only to God, and so an
usurping of God's prerogative; wherefore it appears, that the objecting
of these and other such like things against this duty, is the effect of
an impotent malice, a