A person of David’s character, especially circumstanced as he was at that time, could not possibly have been destitute of considerations.  The society of the woman who had been the occasion of the crimes which had so maimed his character, must have brought those crimes to his remembrance, and kept them on his mind.  Every time she came into his presence, or cheered him by her smiles, a group of affecting thoughts must have rushed in upon him; his first offence, an offence which the law of his God would have obliged him to punish with death, in a subject, and his after, and still more enormous sins, which he had committed to hide the first, and possess the object which he was forbidden even to covet, would occur to his mind.  From the lovely object in his presence, his mind would naturally revert to her late, first greatly injured, and then murdered husband; to his faithfulness and zeal for the honor of his king and country, which had torn him from the embraces of a lovely partner, and the society of a family dear to him, and would not even suffer him to visit them when liberty was given him of his prince; to his careful attention to deliver the letters, by which he had unsuspectingly borne the mandate for his own murder; to his heroism when ordered up to the walls of the besieged city, though not supported by the commander in chief; and his noble exertions to subdue the enemies of Israel, amidst which he had bravely fallen!  Such reflexions must have filled his mind; nor was it possible that he should have driven them away.

Neither could he do other than condemn the part which he had acted and feel pain when he considered it.  Surely such considerations must have racked his guilty soul, and made him tremble and mourn in bitterness of his spirit before God.

A graceless tyrant who neither fears God, nor regards man, may view, his subjects as made for him, and think himself entitled to deprive them at his pleasure, of every comfort, and even life.  This hath been the avowed sentiment of many an eastern despot.  But it is not supposeable of a good man—­“the man after God’s own heart,” though now seduced into certain heinous sins.  Surely he could not think on his ways—­on his then late transgressions, but remorse must have harrowed up his soul!  He must have been deeply affected, and led to cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” The feelings of a good man, who had been seduced into sin and reflected upon it with deep contrition, are pathetically described by the pen of this same person, in the thirty second psalm; and description is couched in the first person, as what himself had experienced.  “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old by reason of my roaring all the days long.  For day and night thy hand was heavy on me; my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.”  There is a strong probability that his feeling on this occasion, before he confessed his sin, and obtained a sense of pardon, are here expressed.  They are the same which we should suppose he must feel while tormentedwith a sense of such enormous guilt.