The Godly Man's Picture

2. Godly sorrow is ingenuous; it is more for the evil that is in sin, than the evil which follows after; it is more for the spot than the sting: Hypocrites weep for sin only as it brings affliction. I have read of a Fountain that never sends out streams, but the Evening before a Famine: Hypocrites never send forth the streams of their tears, but when Gods Judgements are approaching.

3. Godly sorrow is influential; it makes the heart better, Eccles. 7. 3. By the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. Divine tears do not only wet, but wash, they purge out the love of sin.

Use 1.¹ How far are they from being godly; who scarce ever shed a tear for sin: If they lose a near Relation, they weep, but though they are in danger of losing God and their Souls, they weep not. How few know what it is to be in an Agony for sin, or what a broken heart means; their eyes are not like the Fish-pools of Heshbon, full of water, Cant. 7. 4. but rather like the Mountains of ⟨p. 76⟩Gilboa, which had no dew upon them, 2 Sam. 1. 21. It was a greater plague for Pharaoh to have his heart turned into stone, than to have his Rivers turned into blood.

Use 1.¹ How far are they from being godly; who scarce ever shed a tear for sin: If they lose a neer Relation, they weep, but though they are in danger of losing God and their Souls, they weep not. How few know what it is to be in an Agony for sin, or what a broken heart means; their eyes are not like the Fish-pools of Heshbon, full of water,