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 3. After I have confessed those sins which I know, I am to believe that there are very many other that I know not, which David calls "secret sins/' but they are not hidden from God who is to judge me,  and chastise me for them. And this must keep me careful and sorrowful. These sins are hidden from me for one of these three causes: — either because I have already forgotten them or because they were very subtle, as interior pride, rash judgments, sinister intentions, negligences and omissions; — or because I committed them with some ignorance and error, or by the illusion of the devil, thinking that I did God service in them. And thus joining the sins that I know with the sins that I know not, I may believe that they amount to an innumerable multitude, and that they are (as David said) "more in number than the hairs of my head"  and (as King Manasses said) " many more than the sands of the sea."  Hence I will draw great admiration at God's patience in suffering me. For one injury, or two, anyone may bear; but so many, so often repeated, so divers, and done with so great perverseness, who can suffer but Almighty God?

Colloquy. — Truly, O my God, there was need of such an infinite patience as Thine to bear with such an infinity of wrongs and injuries as mine; but seeing Thou hast not been wearied to bear with me, let it stand with Thy good pleasure to pardon me. Amen.

1. Hence I will ascend to consider the grievousness of these sins, by reason of their multitude, profiting from some similitudes used in the Divine Scripture. For if sin be like " a millstone hanged about the neck," with which man is thrown into the " depth" of hell, my sins being as many as the sands of the sea or the hairs of my head, what an immense burden