the people wept very sore.”  Verse 2d, And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land.  Verse 3d, Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God, to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them.  Verse 10, And Ezra the priest stood up and said unto them, Ye have transgressed and taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel.  Verse 11, Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers, and do his pleasure.  Verse 12, Then all the congregation answered, and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do.”  Neh. ix. 1—­“Now, in the twenty and fourth day of this 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, and passion against the whole design of the work, which is too shrewd an evidence of a malignant spirit.