Scrupulous confession

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Often appears with: the passions and the emotions · sin, guilt, and repentance · sin categorization · repentance anxiety · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · despair

Usually: reflection (1) · crisis of belief (1) · indignation (1) · lament (1)

Institutes of the Christian Religion (Vol. 1 of 2) primary

Jean Calvin · 1541 (initial publication of the Institutes; this record is for a later 1559/French-collated edition, but the work’s composition spans Calvin’s revisions after earlier versions)
Book I. On The Knowledge Of God The Creator. > Chapter IV. The Sophistry And Jargon Of The Schools Concerning Repentance, (18/37)

He describes how scrupulous confession drives believers into a multiplying maze of sins and circumstances, producing despair, then worsening their guilt with endless demands to confess even negligence.

of the mire, and let me not sink.”(1722) Who can now think of recounting his sins, when he sees that David was unable to enter on an enumeration of his? XVII. The souls of those who have been affected with any discoveries of God, have been most cruelly tormented by this fatal delusion. First, they called themselves to an account; they divided sins into boughs, branches, twigs, and leaves, according to the distinctio…