Pg 125 ‘I, your pastern, whom you all reverence….. he loaded for his miserable self.’
Dimmesdale is not able to make a confession that would release him from his inner torment because he is too weak. He tries a pathetic public confession saying that he sinned and did a terrible thing, but his congregation doesn’t think he could do anything that bad and find him in even higher esteem because of that.
Irony here, but he admits that he uses this confession against himself, meaning he talks vaguely of sinning without the details of the sin and knows how the congregation will react (and hold him up higher).
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