there is no
connection between our confession and his remission but that which the
absolute good pleasure of his will hath made, besides, that repentance is
as free grace given from the exalted Prince, as remission of sins is.

Sermon XIX.

1 John i. 9, 10.--"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a
liar," &c.

And who will not confess their sin, say you? Who doth not confess sins
daily, and, therefore, who is not forgiven and pardoned? But stay, and
consider the matter again. Take not this upon your first light
apprehensions, which in religion are commonly empty, vain, and
superficial, but search the scriptures, and your own hearts that ye may
know what confession means. It may be said of that external custom of
confession that many of you have, that the Lord hath not required
it,--"sacrifices and burnt offerings thou wouldest not." Some external
submissions and confessions, which you take for compensation for sins and
offences against God,--these, I say, are but abomination to the Lord, but
"a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise," Psal. li.
16, 17. And, "Lo, I come to do thy will, I delight in it," Psal. xl. 7, 8.
When external profession and confessions are separated from the internal
contrition of the heart and godly sorrow for sin, and when both internal
contrition and external profession and confession are divided from
conformity, or study of conformity to God's will, then they are in no
better acceptance with God than those external sacrifices which God
rejected, though he had required them, because they were disjoined from
the true life of them and spiritual meaning, that is, faith in a mediator,
and love to obedience. If confession flow not from some contrition of
heart if there be not some inward spring of this kind, the heart, opened
and unfolding its very inside before God, breaking in pieces, which makes
both pain or sense, and likewise gives the clearer view of the inward
parts of the heart, and if it be not joined with affection to God's will
and law, earnest love to new obedience, it is but a vain, empty, and
counterfeit confession, that denies itself. I suppose, a man that
confesses sin which he feels not, or forsakes not, in so doing, he
declares that he knows not the nature of sin; he may know that such an
action is commonly called s