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Look not upon thy sins so inseparably that thou canst not see Christ too: come not to a confession to God, without consideration of the promises of his Gospel; even the sense and remorse of sin is a dangerous consideration, but when the cup of salvation stands by me, to keep me from fainting.
John Donne: Sermons on the Penitential Psalm.
A broken and contrite heart God will not despise. That is, God will not, God cannot, pass by, overlook, or disregard it. But the heart is only then broken and contrite when all its strongholds are broken down, all false coverings taken off, and it sees, with inwardly open eyes, everything to be bad, false, and rotten, that does or can proceed from it as its own.
William Law: Letter XI.
When all is done, with this cross thus laid out for me, and taken up by me, I must follow Christ; Christ to his end; his end is his cross; that is, I must bring my cross to his; lay down my cross at the foot of his; confess that there is no dignity, no merit in mine, but as it receives an impression, a sanctification from his. If I could die a thousand times for Christ, this were nothing, if Christ had not died for me before.
John Donne: Sermons.
We fail oftentimes of the sight of him, and anon we fail into our self, and then find we no feeling of right—naught but contrariness that is in our self. . . . And in this we are in travail and tempest with feeling of sins, and of pain in many divers manners, spiritual and bodily, as it is known to us in this life.
Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love.
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