ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF SIN. 63 silence, my bones waxed old, through my roaring all the day long." Psalm 32 : 3. How could David keep silence, and yet roar all the day longl What is that silence which is consistent with roaring l It is a mere negation of the duty expressed, verse 5, that is intended : " I ac- knowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquities I have not hid." It was not a silence of submission and wait- ing on God : that would not have produced a wasting of his spiritual strength, as he complains this silence did; nor yet was it a sullen, stubborn, contumacious spirit. He implies, as Calvin well says, " an affection between patience and stubbornness, bordering on the one and the other :" that is, he had a deep sense of sin ; this disquieted and perplexed him all the day long, which he calls his roaring ; it weakened and wearied him, ma- king his bones wax old, or his strength decay. Yet was he not able to bring his heart to that ingenuous, gracious acknowledgment which, like the opening of a festered wound, would have given at least some ease to his soul. God's children are often, in this matter, like ours: though they are convinced of a fault, and are really troubled at the thought of it, yet they will hardly acknowledge it. So do God's people : they will go up and down, sigh and mourn ; but an evil and untoward frame of spirit, under the power of unbelief and fear, keeps them from this duty. Now that this acknowledgment may be acceptable to God, it is required that it befree, and that it be full. I. It must be free and spiritually ingenuous. Cain, Pharaoh, Ahab, Judas, came all to an acknowledgment of sin ; but it was whether they would or not. It was pressedout of them : it did not willingly flow from them. The confession of a person under the convincing terrors of the law or dread of threatening judgments, is like that of malefactors on the rack, who speak out that for which they and their friends must die. What they sav
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