'A deep sorrow, not a superficial sigh': Jeremy Taylor's sermon 'The Invalidity of a Late, or Deathbed Repentance'

Last Friday, we commenced Lenten readings from one of the more controversial of Jeremy Taylor's Golden Grove sermons, 'The Invalidity of a Late, or Deathbed Repentance'. It is too often presented as a Caroline rupture with Reformation thought. The previous post emphasised how such an interpretation did not do justice to Luther and Calvin on repentance, and how Taylor's understanding of repentance cohered with the Reformation.

Today's extract continues on this theme. Here Taylor contrasts authentic repentance, "a deep sorrow", with a mere "superficial sigh". Crucially, Taylor insists that repentance must be such a sorrow "must be productive" of both a hatred and a declining of sin:

Repentance implies a deep sorrow, as the beginning and introduction of this duty; not a superficiall sigh, or tear, not a calling our selves sinners, and miserable persons; this is far from that godly sorrow that worketh repentance; and yet I wish there were none in the world, or none amongst us, who cannot remember that ever they have done this little towards the abolition of their multitudes of sins; but yet if it were not a hearty, pungent sorrow, a sorrow that shall break the heart in pieces; a sorrow that shall so irreconcile us to sin, as to make us rather choose to die then to sin, it is not so much as the beginning of repentance. But in Holy Scripture, when the people are called to repentance, and sorrow (which is ever the prologue to it) marches sadly, and first opens the seene, it is ever expressed to be great, clamorous and sad: it is called a weeping sorely in the verse next after my text, a weeping with the bitternesse of heart; a turning to the Lord with weeping, fasting, and mourning; a weeping day and night; the sorrow of heart; the breaking of the spirit; the mourning like a dove, and chattering like a swallow; and if we observe the threnes and sad accents of the Prophet Jeremy when he wept for the sins of his Nation, the heart-breakings of David when he mourned for his adultery and murder, and the bitter tears of Saint Peter when he washed off the guilt and basenesse of his fall, and the denying his Master; we shall be sufficiently instructed in this praeludium or introduction to repentance; and that it is not every breath of a sigh, or moisture of a tender eye, not every crying Lord have mercy upon me that is such a sorrow as begins our restitution to the state of grace and Divine favour: but such a sorrow that really condemnes ourselves, and by an active, effectual sentence declares us worthy of stripes and death, of sorrow and eternall paines, and willingly endures the first to prevent the second; and weeps and mourns, and fasts to obtain of God but to admit us to a possibility of restitution: and although all sorrow for sins hath not the same expression, nor the same degree of pungency and sensitive trouble (which differs according to the temper of the body custome, the sexe, and accidental tendernesse) yet it is not a Godly sorrow unlesse it really produce these effects; that is, 1. That it makes us really to hate, & 2. actually to decline sin, and 3. produce in us a fear of Gods anger, a sense of the guilt of his displeasure; and 4. Then, such consequent trouble as can consist with such apprehension of the Divine displeasure: which if it expresse not in tears and hearty complaints, must be expressed in watchings and strivings against sin, in confessing the goodnesse and justice of God threatning or punishing us, in patiently bearing the rod of God, in confession of our sins, in accusation of our selves, in perpetual begging of pardon, and mean and base opinions of our selves, and in al the natural productions from these; according to our temper and constitution; it must be a sorrow of the reasonable faculty, the greatest in its kinde; and if it be lesse in kinde; or not productive of these effects, it is not a godly sorrow, not the exordium of repentance ... Repentance is a great volume of duty; and Godly sorrow is but the frontispiece or title page: it is the harbinger or first introduction to it; or if you will consider it in the words of Saint Paul: Godly sorrow worketh repentance. 

In Calvin we find the same emphasis that hatred of sin is the necessary beginning of repentance and the same invocation of the Apostle's words:

As repentance begins with dread and hatred of sin, the Apostle sets down godly sorrow as one of its causes (2 Cor. 7:10). By godly sorrow he means when we not only tremble at the punishment, but hate and abhor the sin, because we know it is displeasing to God ... as hatred of sin, which is the beginning of repentance, first gives us access to the knowledge of Christ, who manifests himself to none but miserable and afflicted sinners, groaning, laboring, burdened, hungry, and thirsty, pining away with grief and wretchedness, so if we would stand in Christ, we must aim at repentance, cultivate it during our whole lives, and continue it to the last ... when the name repentance is applied to the external profession, it is used improperly, and not in the genuine meaning as I have explained it. For that is not so much a turning unto God as the confession of a fault accompanied with deprecation of the sentence and punishment.

There are striking and significant similarities in how Taylor and Calvin understand both the beginning and nature of repentance. Note, too, how both declare that confession is necessarily inherent to repentance. In Taylor's words, "in confession of our sins, in accusation of our selves, in perpetual begging of pardon, and mean and base opinions of our selves". Such confession is, as Calvin goes on to state, "a part of true repentance which cannot be omitted".