2 Corinthians 7:10 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Godly sorrow; that sorrow which is according to God, either commanded by him, (as sorrow for our own or others sins, or for the judgments of God, as they are the indications of God's wrath and displeasure for sin), or which he, as the God of grace, worketh in the soul, touching the heart by the finger of his Spirit, Malachi 12:10. Or that sorrow whose end is the glory of God, in the reformation of the person sorrowing, by a hatred and detestation of sin, and a hearty turning from it. Worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of; it is not repentance, but it produceth that change of heart and life which is repentance; and shall not be imperfect, but perfect, which shall issue in the salvation of the soul, and will never be repented of. Never did any when he came to die repent of true repentance; nor is it possible that reasonable souls should repent of what issueth in their eternal salvation. But the sorrow of the world worketh death; but all sorrow except this is but the sorrow of the world, the effect of which is ofttimes natural death; while men bow down under their burdens, and through impatience destroy themselves, or at least so fix their thoughts upon sad objects, and so afflict themselves with them, that they bring themselves into diseases tending to death. It also worketh spiritual death; as it indisposeth men for their duty, (as it was in the case of Elijah), and is a temptation to them to be angry against God, (as in the case of Jonah), to fret, murmur, and repine against God's providence: and by this means it also worketh towards eternal death, which is the wages belonging to sin.