When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.
Ver. 3. When I kept silence] i.e. While I, through guile of spirit (for this leaven of hypocrisy is more or less in the best hearts, though it sway not there), concealed my sin, and kept the devil's counsel, contenting myself with his false medicines and placiboes. That old manslayer knoweth well that as sin is the soul's sickness, so confession is the soul's vomit; and that there is no way to purge the sick soul but upwards. He, therefore, holdeth the lips close, that the heart may not disburden itself. David, by his persuasion, kept silence for a while, but that he found was to his ruth; and if he had held so it might have been to his ruin. Men, in pain of conscience, will shirk for ease rather than sue for pardon; as the prodigal first joined himself to a citizen, then ate husks, &c., before he would resolve to return. Satan had first seduced David, and then gagged him, as it were, that he might keep silence. But then God took him and set him upon the rack, where he roared till he resolved to confess. And the like befell Bilney, Bainham, Whittle, and many other of the martyrs, who, having first yielded, could never be at rest within themselves till they had publicly confessed their fault, and retracted their subscriptions to those Popish articles.
My bones waxed old] i.e. My strength wasted and wore away, I was in a pitiful plight, per febrim forsan, saith an expositor, by a fever, possibly, the fruit of his inward affliction. So bitter and burdensome is sin cloaked and close kept.
Through my roaring all the day long] Like a wild beast, belluinos potius quam humanos gemitus et querimonias fudi, I rather roared to the enfeebling of my body than repented to the easing of my conscience (Jun.). I cried out for pain, but prayed not for pardon. As a lion in a snare roareth, as a bird in a gin fluttereth, so it fareth with hypocrites under God's hand (and with better men too sometimes, and for a season); but especially in pangs of conscience, they bellow like bulls in a net, or swine when a sticking; they beat the air with many brutish roarings and ragings, which avail them no more than if an ox should break out of the slaughter house after the deadly blow given him; the sting of conscience still remaineth.