3. After I have confessed those sins which I know, I am to believe that there are very many other that I know not, which David calls "secret sins/' [1] but they are not hidden from God who is to judge me, [2] and chastise me for them. And this must keep me careful and sorrowful. These sins are hidden from me for one of these three causes: — either because I have already forgotten them or because they were very subtle, as interior pride, rash judgments, sinister intentions, negligences and omissions; — or because I committed them with some ignorance and error, or by the illusion of the devil, thinking that I did God service in them. And thus joining the sins that I know with the sins that I know not, I may believe that they amount to an innumerable multitude, and that they are (as David said) "more in number than the hairs of my head" [3] and (as King Manasses said) " many more than the sands of the sea." [4] Hence I will draw great admiration at God's patience in suffering me. For one injury, or two, anyone may bear; but so many, so often repeated, so divers, and done with so great perverseness, who can suffer but Almighty God?
Colloquy. — Truly, O my God, there was need of such an infinite patience as Thine to bear with such an infinity of wrongs and injuries as mine; but seeing Thou hast not been wearied to bear with me, let it stand with Thy good pleasure to pardon me. Amen.
POINT II.
1. Hence I will ascend to consider the grievousness of these sins, by reason of their multitude, profiting from some similitudes used in the Divine Scripture. For if sin be like " a millstone hanged about the neck," with which man is thrown into the " depth" [5] of hell, my sins being as many as the sands of the sea or the hairs of my head, what an immense burden
