CHAPTER XLII.
How to resist the Devil when he tries to ensnare us by an indiscreet Zeal.
WHEN the Devil, crafty as he is, observes that we are walking straight forward in the path of holiness with lively and well-regulated desires, and that he cannot draw us aside by open allurements, he transforms himself into an angel of light, and by friendly suggestions, quotations from Scripture, and examples of the Saints, importunately urges us to aspire indiscreetly to the height of perfection, that he may presently cause us to fall headlong from it. With this in view he excites us to chastise the body with great harshness, with scourges, fasts, hair-cloths, and other similar mortifications, that he may either tempt us to pride, by thinking we are doing great things (as is especially the case with women), or that he may undermine our health, and so unfit us for doing good works, or else that spiritual exercises may become irksome and distasteful to us through pain and over-fatigue; and thus by degrees we grow lukewarm in the way of godliness, and at last rush with greater avidity than before to the delights and pleasures of the world.
