A Golden Chain

Understand this conclusion as the former, namely, that grief of heart for the want of any grace necessary to salvation, is as much with God as the grace it self. When being in distress, we cannot pray as we ought, God accepts the very groans, sobs, and sighs of the perplexed heart, as the prayer it self. Rom. 8. 26. When we are grieved, because we cannot be grieved for our sins, it is a degree and measure of godly sorrow before God.¹ Augustine saith well: Sometimes our prayer is luke-warm, or rather cold and almost no prayer: nay sometime it is altogether no prayer at all, and yet we cannot with grief perceive this in our selves: for if we can but grieve, because we cannot pray, we now pray indeed. Hierome saith,² Then we are just when we acknowledge our selves to be sinners: Again, this is the true wisdom of man, to know himself to be imperfect: And (that I may so speak) the perfection of all just men in the flesh is imperfect: Augustine again saith, That the virtue which is now in a just man is thus far forth perfect, that unto the perfection thereof there belongs a true acknowledgement and an humble confession of the imperfection thereof. A broken and a contrite heart after an offence, is as much with God, as if there had been no offence at all, and therefore so soon as David after his grievous fall, in heaviness of heart confessed his sin, saying in effect but th•s much: I have sinned, the prophet in the name of the Lord, pronounceth t•• pardon of his sin in heaven, and that presently.