Who can understand [his] errors? cleanse thou me from secret [faults].
Ver. 12. Who can understand his errors?] This David speaketh doubtless out of a deep sense of his own imperfections and defects in what the law (so much by him commended) requireth; and to prevent mistakes, lest any man, hearing him speak of great reward, should think that heaven may be merited and salvation attained by a man's own righteousness. No such matter, believe it, saith holy David, I have neither done the law nor deserved the reward, but do fly to God by prayer; and three things I have to beg of him: First, That he would graciously pardon my secret sins and errors, unknown to myself, or at least to others. Secondly, That he would keep me from proud and presumptuous sins, Psalms 19:13. Thirdly, That he would bridle my tongue and mind from speaking, or but thinking, aught that may be offensive to his majesty, Psalms 19:14. For the first of these, Humanum est, errare et ignorare suum, It is incident to every man to err, and then to be ignorant of his errors (Jun.). Certain it is, that our lives are fuller of sins than the firmament is of stars, or the furnace of sparks. And if the best man's faults were written in his forehead, it would make him pull his hat over his eyes, as the proverb hath it. David here seeth such volumes of corruptions in his heart, and so many foul erratas in his life, that he cannot but cry out, Who can understand, &c., O cleanse, &c. The most perfect saints are the most sensible of their imperfections; as the more delicate the senses are the more sharply are they affected with what offends them, Rom 7:14 1 Corinthians 15:9,10. Alas for us (saith one good man)! Ipsae lachrymae sunt lachrymabiles; we had need to weep over our tears, sigh over our sobs, mourn over our griefs, &c. Look how when we have swept a room never so clean (saith Spinaeus, De Instit. Christian.), if the sun do but come into it at the windows, we soon espy abundance of filthy motes, mingled with the beams thereof; so is it with our hearts, when once enlightened. What a blind buzzard then was he that said, Non habeo, Domine, quod mihi ignoscas, Lord, I have nothing for thee to pardon! And no wiser was Bellarmine, that great scholar, but ill read in his own heart, if that be true that is reported of him, viz. that when the priest came to absolve him, he could not remember any particular sin to confess till he went back in his thoughts as far as his youth. Of Philip III, king of Spain, it is said, that he lived so strictly that he never committed any gross crime or wilful wickedness; yet coming to die, he cried out, Oh that I had never reigned! Oh that I had lived a private life in the wilderness, that I might not have now to answer for not doing the good or hindering the evil that I might have done in my government! (Val. Max. Christ. 263).
Cleanse thou me from secret faults] Secret from myself, many of them (sins of ignorance and of inadvertency), secret from the world, more of them, heart sins, but not secret from the Lord, Psa 90:8 Hebrews 4:13. These are of daily and hourly incursion, involuntary and unavoidable infirmities, yet are they sins properly so called; and we must be cleansed from them by the merit and Spirit of Christ; they must be repented of in general at least; and then there is a pardon of course for them, and they do not usually distract and plunge the conscience.