reupon
against relapses into the sins which we have confessed. And that mercy
which thy servant Augustine apprehends when he says to thee, "Thou hast
forgiven me those sins which I have done, and those sins which only by
thy grace I have not done": they were done in our inclination to them,
and even that inclination needs thy mercy, and that mercy he calls a
pardon. And these are most truly secret sins, because they were never
done, and because no other man, nor I myself, but only thou knowest, how
many and how great sins I have escaped by thy grace, which, without
that, I should have multiplied against thee.

X. PRAYER.

O eternal and most gracious God, who as thy Son Christ Jesus, though he
knew all things, yet said he knew not the day of judgment, because he
knew it not so as that he might tell us; so though thou knowest all my
sins, yet thou knowest them not to my comfort, except thou know them by
my telling them to thee. How shall I bring to thy knowledge, by that
way, those sins which I myself know not? If I accuse myself of original
sin, wilt thou ask me if I know what original sin is? I know not enough
of it to satisfy others, but I know enough to condemn myself, and to
solicit thee. If I confess to thee the sins of my youth, wilt thou ask
me if I know what those sins were? I know them not so well as to name
them all, nor am sure to live hours enough to name them all (for I did
them then faster than I can speak them now, when every thing that I did
conduced to some sin), but I know them so well as to know that nothing
but thy mercy is so infinite as they. If the naming of sins of thought,
word and deed, of sins of omission and of action, of sins against thee,
against my neighbour and against myself, of sins unrepented and sins
relapsed into after repentance, of sins of ignorance and sins against
the testimony of my conscience, of sins against thy commandments, sins
against thy Son's Prayer, and sins against our own creed, of sins
against the laws of that church, and sins against the laws of that state
in which thou hast given me my station; if the naming of these sins
reach not home to all mine, I know what will. O Lord, pardon me, me, all
those sins which thy Son Christ Jesus suffered for, who suffered for all
the sins of all the world; for there is no sin amongst all those which
had not been my sin, if thou hadst not been my God, and antedated me a
pardon in thy preventing grace. And since sin, in the natur