1.
I answer, not with intent to glorifie God as Gods Saints do, taking shame before the world unto themselves, lying down in the Dust that God may tread upon them, and be exalted.
2.
False confessions.
Not with hatred of their sins, but in horrour and trouble at the danger of them, or in the evidence of them flying in their faces. Thus a Merchant casteth those goods over boord into the sea in a storme, which afterward he wisheth in again: Like a Dog, they vomit up the filth which (after their stomach is eased) they return unto, and lick up by new Commissions: But Gods children confesse in hatred of their sins, and loathing of themselves, and (like men in some sicknesses) are willing to take those medicines which may provoke and cause vomit, which afterward they are so far from returning to, that they abhor to touch, or look on it.
Obj. But may not Gods children return again to their vomit, and commit the same sins, which they have cast, up by humble confession?
The sins of Gods people distinguished.
I answer, the sins of Gods children are either, 1. grosse or scandalous, which when they recover out of, and give glory unto God, by publike confession, we seldome or never find them returning to such their vomit again. Hence we hear no more of Noahs Drunkennesse, of David's Adultry, of Peters deniall of Christ Jesus, &c.
Or 2ly. Their sins are sins of a more private and ordinary distemper, wherein their passions of anger, or neglect, or forgetfullnes prevail against them, never without some bitternes, and grief, and humiliation, and endeavour, with resolution of a more watchfull, and heavenly, and spirituall conversation?
10thly.