10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.



Ver. 10. Godly sorrow worketh] Sin bred sorrow, and sorrow, being right, destroyeth sin; as the worm that breeds in the wood, eats into it and devours it. (Chrysost.) So that of this sorrow according to God we may say as the Romans did of Pompey the Great, that it is the fair and happy daughter of an ugly and odious mother. ( Å÷èñïõ ðáôñïò öéëôáôïí ôåêíïí . Plutarch.) It may fitly be compared to Faustus, son of Vortigern king of Britain (incestuously begotten of his own daughter) who wept himself blind (saith the chronicler) for the abominations of his parents.



Repentance never to be repented of] That is, saith one, never to fall back again, for a man in falling back, seemeth to repent him of his repentance ( áìåôáìåëçôïí ). Others interpret it, such a repentance as a man shall never have cause to repent of. (Marbury on Repentance.) Job cursed the day of his birth; but no man was ever heard to curse the day of his new birth. For it is repentance to salvation, it hath heaven; it is that rainbow, which if God see shining in our hearts, he will never drown our souls.



But the sorrow of the world] That which carnal men conceive either for the want or loss of good, or for the sense or fear of evil.



Worketh death] As it did in Queen Mary, who died (as some supposed by her much sighing before her death) of thought and sorrow either for the departure of King Philip, or the loss of Calais, or both. There are those who interpret death in this place, of spiritual death, because it is opposed here to life and salvation. (Dike on the Heart.)