474 A SERIOUS ADDRESS TO they sing the song of the Lamb, and run his delight - errands. And as thou seest, serious Reader, the nature, necessity, and excellence, of godly sorrow, thou art probably desirous of being informed, how deep thine must be, to constitute thee a true penitent. Know, then, that it must be deep enough to embitter thy most pleasing, profitable, and habitual sins, and to prevent thy resting without a clear sense of thy peculiar interest in Christ. It must be profound enough to make him and his gospel infinitely precious to thee, and to produce, under God, the blessed effects here- after to be mentioned. To be more particular ; a true penitent may cer- tainly, without despair or madness, go as far in godly sorrow, as David does in his penitential psalms, or our church in the first of the homily on Fasting : " When good men, says she, feel in themselves the heavy bur- den of sin, see damnation to be the reward of it, and behold with the eye of their mind the horror of hell, they tremble, they qúake, they are inwardly touched with sorrowfulness of heart for their offences, and cannot but accuse themselves, and open their grief unto Almighty God, and call on him for mercy. This being done seriously, their mind is so occupied, partly with sorrow and heaviness, partly with an earnest desire to be delivered from the danger of hell and damnation, that all desire of meat and drink is laid aside, and loathing of all worldly things and pleasures come in place, so that they like nothing better than to weep, to lament, to mourn, and, both with words and behaviour of body, do show themselves weary of this life." Nevertheless it must be observed, that godly sorrow needs not be equal, either in degree or duration, in all penitents. Those whose hearts through divine grace open as readily and gently as that of Lydia, happily avoid many of David's pangs and Job's terrors. The powerful and instantaneous, or the gentle and gradual manner, in which souls are awakened; the difference
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