Chapter XI.
How we can decide what is useful and the sorrow
according to God, and what is devilish and deadly.
But
that dejection and
sorrow which “worketh repentance steadfast unto salvation”
is obedient, civil, humble, kindly, gentle, and patient, as it springs
from the love of God, and unweariedly extends itself from desire of
perfection to every bodily grief and sorrow of spirit; and somehow or
other rejoicing and feeding on hope of its own profit preserves all the
gentleness of courtesy and forbearance, as it has in itself all the
fruits of the Holy Spirit of which the same Apostle gives the list:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance,
goodness, benignity, faith, mildness, modesty.”
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But the other kind is rough, impatient,
hard, full of rancour and useless grief and penal despair, and breaks
down the man on whom it has fastened, and hinders him from energy and
wholesome sorrow, as it is unreasonable, and not only hampers the
efficacy of his prayers, but actually destroys all those fruits of the
Spirit of which we spoke, which that other sorrow knows how to
produce.
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Gal. v. 22, 23
.