Temptation
by Archbishop, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning
"Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert, to be tempted by the devil." — Matt. 4:1
The Son of God, who is Incarnate Sanctity and Eternal Life, when He came into the world to redeem mankind, placed Himself in the most intimate contact, possible to His perfections, with sin in the desert, and with death upon the Cross. In the temptation in the desert, Jesus tasted of all the bitterness of sin, except only of its guilt: in His death upon the Cross, the immortal God tasted death for every man. Now I have taken the temptation of our Divine Saviour as the outset of our present thoughts, because in itself it is sufficient proof of what I affirmed some time ago, namely, that to be tempted is not to sin, and that many who are the most tempted are innocent. You will remember I was speaking about the distinctions of sin, when I touched upon the subject of temptation. It was necessary to guard what I was saying, lest those who are tempted, and perhaps sorely and habitually, should lose heart, and begin to fear lest their temptations are personal sins.
Now the example of our Divine Lord shows us that One who is sinless may be the subject of temptation. He suffered temptation for our sakes, just as He suffered death for our sakes. He suffered temptation, in order, as St. Paul says, "that we may have such a high priest, not one who cannot have compassion or be touched with a feeling of our infirmities, but one who was tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15); and again, that "He suffered, being tempted, that he might know how to succor or give help to those that are tempted." (Heb. 2:18). It was that, out of His own personal experience, the Son of God, incarnate in our humanity, might taste of sin in all its bitterness, in all its penalties, save only that which to Him is impossible, the guilt of sin, that so He might be a Saviour full of sympathy with sinners.
And now it is necessary to observe the distinction, which I have drawn with all possible care and precision. Though it is true that temptation is not sin, nevertheless temptation and sin are very nearly allied — they are very like each other, and they may be easily mistaken; secondly, temptations are the occasions of sin; and thirdly, temptations with great rapidity and with great facility pass into sins. For this cause it is necessary with all accuracy to distinguish between them. Perhaps someone will say: "I can quite understand that the Son of God, being man, was capable of being tempted; but that gives me little encouragement, because every temptation presented to His sinless soul was instantly quenched, like as sparks falling upon the face of pure water are immediately extinguished; but when temptations come to me, the sparks are struck upon the touchwood, they fall upon the flax, and upon the dry leaves which are ready to kindle."
There is indeed this difference. The temptations of our Divine Saviour were altogether from without, and none of them from within; our temptations are indeed in great part from without; but a very large part of them, and the worst part of them, are from within. They come up out of our own hearts, they are in our own thoughts, in our own passions, in our own tempers, in our faculties, in our memory — here are the lairs and the haunts of temptation. These are the most dangerous, and the example of our Divine Lord does not reach to what we suffer. Now, nothing is more certain than this, that all the sorrows which come upon a man in life — sickness, pain, bereavements, afflictions, all the crosses he may meet with, losses, disappointments, bankruptcy — all these things are nothing, compared with the bitterness, the keenness, of temptation.
A man may say: "I could bear all these things readily. They come from without; and they have not that which is the special suffering of temptation, the bitterness of sin is not in them. They do not come between me and God. Indeed, the more of suffering and sorrow I have in this world, the more I am driven to the presence of God. They are rods and scourges, driving me nearer and nearer to Him; but my temptations come between me and God. They come and cut me off from Him. They hang like a dark cloud between me and the face of God. They make me feel it to be impossible that God can love me, impossible that I can be saved, impossible that I should not be grieving the Holy Spirit of God all the day long. I am like those who are described in Holy Scripture, who do many things for the best, nevertheless, after all, do not know whether they are the objects of love or hatred."1 (Eccles. 9:1).
Now, I dare say there is not one of you who does not know and feel what Holy Scripture calls "the wound of his own heart." The wound of a man's heart is the great master fault, or the besetting sin, or the three or four besetting sins, such as pride, anger, irritability of temper, jealousy, envy, slothfulness, and many others which I need not specify. I desire to meet the objection of such persons, and I desire to show and to prove, that it is quite possible that a man who suffers all the day long from temptations of this kind, may, nevertheless, in the sight of God, be innocent; and so far as those temptations go, he may be perfectly guiltless. I do not say that this is a common case, but I say it may be; and, therefore, everyone may, if he will only be faithful to the rules I will hereafter try to lay down, take to himself, at least in part, this consolation.
1. First of all, then, temptation is inevitable. Until we have put off our mortality, until corruption is turned into incorruption, we shall be assailed by temptation. To be tempted is simply to be man; to be man is to be tempted. In Holy Scripture, in the book of Genesis, we read these words, that "God did tempt Abraham" (Gen. 22:1); but in the Epistle of St. James we read, "Let no man when he is tempted say that he is tempted by God." (James 1:13). This seems to be a contradiction — but it is not, because the word "tempt" is a word of perfectly neutral signification. It does not necessarily mean "tempt with evil"; it simply means to "try" — "God did try Abraham"; for God puts us on our trial, and that in two ways. He either by His providence sends us a variety of afflictions, or crosses, or losses, or contradictions, by which He tries what our spirit is; or, secondly, He permits that Satan should try us, as He permitted Satan to try and afflict Job. Therefore, when it is said that God "tempts," it means that God tries us; but the other signification is an evil one; for all the temptations that come from Satan are evil in themselves. He never tempts any man to good, unless some accidental good may be the occasion of evil. Now, it is in this latter sense that I am going to speak — that is, of our being tried by evil, tried by Satan. God overrules even the temptations of Satan for our benefit, as I will show.
I say, then, that these temptations are inevitable, and that for this reason: from the time when the Dragon and his angels were overcome by Michael and his angels in Heaven, and Satan was cast out with his evil angels upon earth, from that moment to this there has been warfare round about us. Remember that Satan is an angel created with an intelligence and a will and a power far exceeding that of man.
There is something satanic in the contempt and the ridicule with which men treat Satan. I say it is satanic, because it is a satanic illusion to make men cease to fear him, or cease even to believe in him. He is never more completely master of a man than when the man ridicules his existence — when, as we hear in these days, men say, "There is no devil." The man most under the power of the tempter is he who does not believe in the existence of his enemy. His enemy is round about him day and night, and under his feet. Satan, being of angelic nature, has an angelic intelligence greater than that of man, pervaded by craft and by subtlety. He has also an angelic will mightier than ours, pervaded by an intensity of malice. He has also a power greater than ours, which is always exerted out of jealousy against those who are redeemed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. It was not shed for him; and he is laboring, therefore, day and night, without ceasing, to destroy those who are the heirs of salvation.
There are two titles given to Satan in Holy Scripture: Our Lord called him "the prince of this world" (John 14:30), and St. Paul calls him "the god of this world" (1 Cor. 4:4); and therefore we have closely surrounding us, like an atmosphere, the world of which he is the prince, and, I may say, the sanctuary of which he is the god. For what is the world? It is the intellectual and moral state of the race of mankind without God, pervaded, darkened, falsified, and corrupted by the influence of Satan into the likeness of his own malice. Therefore, Holy Scripture declares that the world is an enemy of God, an immutable enemy; that the world can never be reconciled with God, or God with the world; that the world can never be purified; that even the waters of Baptism only save individuals out of the world; and that the world itself will never be saved, but will be burned up by fire.
Now, this world signifies the tradition of the sin of mankind, the worldwide corruption of human nature by the sins of the flesh and the sins of the spirit, with all their falsehood, impiety, and malice against God. This hangs in the atmosphere of the world: outside Christendom it reigns supreme; inside Christendom it has entered again, like as in the time of pestilence; the very air of our dwellings, after all the care we can bestow, is infected. Even among baptized nations the spirit of the world, wafted from without, and arising up again under our feet from the corrupt soil of human nature, is perpetually renewing itself; and we live surrounded by an atmosphere in which all forms of truth are distorted, and where illusions are presented on every side, so that men are misled, and are turned away from God and from His laws. We live in the midst of such a world, and that world we renounced in our Baptism — "the world with all its pomps"; nevertheless, it has a perpetual action and influence upon every one of us. There is what is called the worldly spirit, which enters with the greatest subtlety into the character of even good people; and there is what is called the time-spirit, which means the dominant way of thinking and of acting which prevails in the age in which we live; and these are powerful temptations, full of danger, and in perpetual action upon us.
Then, thirdly, we carry our temptations about us. We have every one of us the three wounds of Original Sin: ignorance in the understanding; turbulence in the affections, so that they become passions; instability and weakness in the will. The soul is wounded with those three wounds; and nevertheless it is in perpetual motion in thought, word, and deed, save only during the time of sleep. In our waking hours our nature is in unceasing activity, and in perpetual anarchy too, except in those who, being guided by the Spirit of God, are under the influence of grace and conformed to the truth. The thoughts, tempers, affections, passions of the heart, are in a state of ceaseless turbulence, so that the Holy Ghost by the Prophet describes the heart in these words: "The wicked are like a raging sea which cannot rest, casting up mire and dirt." (Is. 57:20). As the sea casts up from its depths the soil under the waters, so the perpetual activity of the heart is casting up the passions and the concupiscences that lie within it. This description applies in its measure to every one of us. We are all in this state; and, therefore, the temptations of Satan, the temptations of the world which are without us, and the temptations from our own heart within — these three temptations are inevitable. We cannot escape them.
Every one of us singly stands between two spirits — there is the Spirit of God on the one side, there is the spirit of Satan on the other; and the human spirit, that is, the soul with its intelligence, heart, and will, stands between. These two spirits, of God and of Satan, are in perpetual conflict round about us and for us — the spirit of Satan striving to pervert, to delude, and to cast us down; the Spirit of God perpetually guiding, strengthening, and upholding us. The thoughts of Satan are infused into us, and also the lights of the Holy Ghost — and sometimes we do not know the one from the other. We sometimes mistake the false lights of Satan for the lights of truth. We sometimes fancy that the lights of truth which come are only temptations. Sometimes we imagine our own human thoughts to be the thoughts and the lights of God; and so we deceive ourselves. We are in this constant state of temptation, which is common to all men.
2. Next, the universality of this temptation is so great, that there is no state of man that is not visited by it. Take, for example, sinners, those that live voluntarily in sin. Satan tempts them; they are the subjects of constant satanic temptation; but be sure that they are not the chief subjects of his temptations, for this reason: they are his servants already, they are already doing his will, they already share his own mind, they already love those evils to which he tempts them. Satan leaves his own servants to do their work for him; they have united themselves with his evil angels.
When our Lord was tempted in the wilderness, it was but the lifting of the veil, and the making visible of that which invisibly is taking place every hour and every moment round about us. "We wrestle not with flesh and blood," as the Apostle says, "but with principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12); that is, with the whole hierarchy of fallen angels round about us. They are mingling among evil and wicked men; the evil and the wicked have united themselves to their allegiance, and Satan leaves them alone — they are doing his work.
The blasphemer is not tempted to blasphemy. Why should he be? He blasphemes already. The unbeliever is not tempted to unbelief — he has lost his faith. The scoffer is no longer tempted to scoffing — he scoffs enough already to satisfy even the "god of this world." So I might go on with every other kind of sin. They have become the members of the "mystery of impiety." (2 Thess. 2:7). Just as all faithful children of God are members of Christ, and the mind and the will and spirit of Jesus Christ descend into them; and being living members of the Mystical Body of Christ, they are united to their Divine Head, so the wicked and sinful are pervaded, as it were, by the mind and the spirit and the will and the malice of Satan: they are, as it were, members of Satan, members of what we might call the "mystical body" of Satan, and are united to their satanic head, and are under his guidance.
But, next, if any one of them strives to return to God, he becomes the subject of a twofold temptation. Satan follows up every deserter who leaves his camp, and he follows him with an intensity of redoubled malice. He multiplies all his temptations. Those by which he fell before, when he tries to rise again and to escape from them, Satan doubles their power and their effect. He never gives him rest. If any of you have tried to break off a fault, I have no doubt you have found that you have been more tempted to that same fault from the very time you began to master it. Need I tell you why? Before, you were swimming with the stream; but when you tried to break off that fault you were swimming against the stream, and you felt the strength of the stream against you. That is to say, you were going onward before the temptation until you turned from sin, then you felt the full force of temptation against you like the stream and current of a river; and that stream and current was doubled by the malice of the tempter.
He is not only very strong in his temptations, but he is very subtle; and when men begin to break off sins of one kind, he will leave them perfectly quiet on that side, and will tempt them on the other to something else which is altogether unlike their former faults. As, for instance, if any man has been tempted to gross sins and has gained the mastery, he will find himself tempted to spiritual sins, which, casting him down, will bring him back to where he was before. Be sure of it, whoever begins, for example, to mortify such a sin as excess in food, if he gains the mastery, will find himself tempted perhaps to some spiritual sin, such as anger, ill-temper, or, it may be, vainglory at what he has achieved. It is all one; what does it matter? There are seven capital sins, of which three may be said to be of the body and four of the soul, but they all can cast the soul into Hell; and if a man perishes by spiritual sin, he is just as certainly condemned to eternal death as if he perishes by the grossest sins of the flesh. Satan in his subtlety knows this, and follows up every man that has turned away from him; and those who turn from him and strive to convert their souls to God are his special objects of temptation.
Even those whom we call servants of God, who have really turned away from Satan and are confirmed in a life of faith and piety — they too have special temptations. For instance, when Satan sees any soul escape out of his hands, and no longer under the dominion of the grosser sins of the body, he changes himself into the likeness of an angel of light. He knows that the grosser forms of temptation will have no more power, that they will be disgusting and alarming, that they will repel and will drive the soul from him; and therefore he changes himself into an angel of light. He comes as a messenger of peace and a preacher of justice and a teacher of purity: and then he will stimulate and excite the imprudent to strain after perfections of penance and perfections of prayer and mystical reaches of the spiritual life, which we read of no doubt in saints, but such as are yet far out of the grasp of those who are beginning to serve God. Nevertheless, these things are sufficient to turn the head and to infuse vainglory, and to call men off from the humble practice of daily duty, and make them climb and clamber up into high places, where they have not the head to stand, and at last they fall through a spiritual intoxication.
So also, those who have turned away from him he tempts to a censorious judgment of others. When they have light to know their own faults and their eyes are opened to discern sin, the use they make of their enlightened eyes is very often to be quick and searching to find the faults of their neighbors; and by turning their eyes outwardly, which are intended to be turned inwardly, they range to and fro, finding out and censuring the faults of other people, and perpetually committing rash judgments in their hearts, and very often, sins of detraction with their tongues.
There is also another temptation, even for those that are advancing far in the way of perfection. Spiritual writers tell us that there is a temptation which they call "the storm in the harbor"; that is, as a ship which has passed through a tempestuous sea and has come at last into the haven of rest, and is lying calmly over its anchors, may yet be struck by lightning or by a sudden squall, and may flounder even in the port of safety; so spiritual pride, spiritual self-love, vainglory at our own imagined perfection, may wreck us at last.
By looking at ourselves in the glass, by reading the lives of the saints until we believe we are saints, by filling our mind with disproportionate and strained imaginations, and then applying them to ourselves: by dreaming that we are that which we can describe, and that there is an aureola, a crown of light hanging over our heads, we may finally cast ourselves down from God. These imaginings and delusions, which come from a profound self-love, and as profound a want of self-knowledge, will turn the heads and the consciences even of those who have escaped from grosser sins, and make them like Simon the Pharisee, who, being blind to his own faults, and censorious of the faults of others, was, in comparison with poor Mary Magdalen, a sinner before the eyes of our Lord: or like the Pharisee in the Temple, who, after thanking God he was not like other men, went down to his house not justified as the poor Publican was.
Therefore we see that temptations are inevitable and universal; and whether you are only penitents or on the way to be saints, do not expect to be exempt from them. Remember, then, that "there is nothing come upon you," as the Apostle says, "but that which is common to man; and God will make also an issue, or a way of escape, so that you may be able to bear it." (1 Cor. 10:13). No temptation is a perfect circle. If indeed the circle of temptation were complete, there would be no way out of it. God never permits any temptation to be a perfect ring; there is always an outlet, always a break out of which the soul with safety may escape.
3. There is still another reason why temptation is not sin. However much you may be tempted, whether it be to deadly (mortal) sins or to lighter, it matters not — those temptations will never be imputed to you as sins unless you willingly consent to them. This is the way of escape which is always open, the sure and certain issue by which every soul may pass, even out of a furnace heated sevenfold. You remember, some time ago we laid down as the essential condition of sin, that it is an evil act contrary to the will of God, with knowledge of the intellect, with the consent of the will, and with the consciousness of what we are doing. Now that one rule will precisely distinguish between sins and temptations. St. Paul, in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, says: "The good I would, I do not; the evil that I would not, that I do. I consent to the law of God in the inward man; but I find another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. So if I do the evil that I would not, it is no more I, but sin that dwelleth in me." (Rom. 7:15-20). Therefore, St. Paul distinguishes between the indwelling "sin" of his nature (that is, the disordered motions of concupiscence, both physical and spiritual) and himself. He says: "It is no more I." Why is it no more himself? Because his will had no part nor lot in that inward "sinfulness" or concupiscence.
The actions that we do may be distinguished, therefore, into those that are deliberate, and those that are not deliberate, or, as it is called, indeliberate. This distinction will precisely draw the line. A deliberate action of sin is what I have described with knowledge, consent, and consciousness. An indeliberate action is that in which these elements are wanting. But you will say: "How is that possible?" It is most possible. When we are out in the sun, we feel the warmth by no act of our own. If the wind blows cold, we feel chilled by no act of our own will. All round about us, and all the day long, the images of the world fill the eye, and yet we can only look at one thing at a time. Though we see a thousand, we can only look at one: and that one we look at with the act of our will; but all the rest simply fall upon our passive sight. We go through the streets, we hear a multitude of words to which we do not listen — we know their meaning as they fall upon our passive ear. Now all these are what I may call indeliberate acts. There is no action of the will in them: and we can no more hinder ourselves from seeing and hearing than from being hot or cold. The thoughts that are in us are set in motion; and the thoughts weave their associations. The memory revives, and gives up the images of the past; and the imagination adds to them — and this process goes on at all hours; for in truth our minds are never at rest. Ay, even in sleep we dream; which is a reason to believe that, though the body is perfectly suspended in its conscious action, the mind is never suspended. Now a great deal of this mental action may indeed become sin if we consent to it; but it is not sin if we do not consent to it: and that for the following reason.
The will, as I have already said before, is the rational appetite of the soul. It is the desire we have in us, guided by reason, choosing and determining what we shall pursue. But round about the will there is, first of all, a circle of affections, which, as God first created them in the Garden of Paradise, were all pure. Round about the affections are the passions, which, as sin has wounded them, are all of them somewhat in disorder; and round about the passions are the senses — sight and hearing, taste and touch — these are the inlets through which sin gains entrance. The Prophet says: "Death climbs up by the windows" (Jer. 9:21); which spiritual writers interpret of sin finding its entrance through the senses — through the open eyes, the open ears — which are like the windows of the soul standing wide.
Satan has no power at all to enter into the soul against our will. The Holy Ghost can enter into the soul, because He is the Creator of the soul, and the Uncreated Spirit of God pervades all creatures. He is the Searcher of the heart, because He pervades the whole heart. He knows it all, because He is present in all; but Satan cannot enter the heart as the Holy Ghost. All that he can do is stand without, watching at the windows, and casting in "the fiery darts." (Eph. 6:16). These "fiery darts" are the temptations which enter through the senses, fall upon the passions, and kindling them, disorder the affections, and through them affect the will; but if the will does not consent, the presence of any amount of temptation may be mere suffering, and however intense, it will not be sin.
So that the way to distinguish between what is temptation and what is sin is to ask yourselves, Do you welcome it? Do you open the door? Do you throw up the window?. Do you invite it to come in and dwell? Or do you say: "The Lord rebuke thee — get thee behind me, Satan"? How do you receive these temptations? When the fiery darts are cast in by the window, do you trample them out or leave them to kindle, till by the eye, or the ear, the memory, and the imagination, they are set on fire?
You feel as if a touch had moved you; as for example, what is a fit of anger but a sudden touch of fire, which comes before we have a moment to deliberate? An offensive answer, or some insolent gesture, or something done in a way to provoke the natural passion of wrath, will immediately elicit our anger. It is in our nature; we cannot help it. As on striking a flint you strike a spark, so on striking human nature, anger immediately responds; and that first emotion of anger is not sinful. It is a sin, if I deliberately welcome it and say, "O, this is just come in time. This is just what I wanted. I have a will to be angry." If you heap on fuel, by thinking of the offence that has been committed, and stir the fire to make it burn more fiercely, then indeed you make it your own. I might give other examples, but you can find them for yourselves, because every one of the seven capital sins may be taken in like manner. I have given the example of one only, to save time, and also because it is better that you make them for yourselves.
Another certain test whether it is temptation or sin is this: does the presence of the temptation give you pleasure, or pain? Do you feel rather gratified by being stirred up to a sense of resentment, or does it give you pain that you have lost your calmness? If you have pleasure in it, then most assuredly you have been consenting; if it gives you pain, then as certainly it is contrary to your will. You know it to be contrary to the law of God, to the example of Jesus Christ; you feel it to be contrary to His meekness, His charity, His love, His compassion, and His generosity, and you feel inwardly grieved and pained with yourself that you are so unlike Him. You know it to be contrary, I will say, to the holiness of God and the purity of your own soul; and therefore you hate the temptation when it comes. You strive against it, you reject it, you pray God to rebuke the presence of the tempter and bruise him under your feet; then you may be well satisfied that all this is a temptation, and not a sin.
I will not say that there may not be some adhesion of your affections, some internal contact as it were, which for a moment puts you in danger; but the example of the first Adam, who, when he was tempted, was sinless, and of the second, who was God, are proofs to us that fiery temptations which we hate may come upon innocent persons.
4. All the manifold temptations of life are used by God for these two purposes: first, to try us, as I have said, and to increase our merit, and therefore our reward; and secondly, to sanctify the soul — out of the very temptations themselves God creates the discipline of sanctification. As to the first, you understand what merit is. We took care to distinguish and define with all precision what is the meaning of merit. It does not mean that we as creatures can snatch by right anything out of the hands of God; but that God has promised He will attach to certain actions a certain reward of His own sovereign grace.
Well, a man is tempted to anger, ambition, falsehood, or whatever you will — if he resists those temptations as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, he proves himself to be faithful and fearless in his warfare. If he resists the temptations to sloth, indulgence, and pleasure, which prevail over softer natures, he shows himself to be a child of God, and a faithful friend to his Divine Friend. He proves that he will neither be scared nor bribed to give up his fidelity; and therefore, every such act of resistance to temptation is, first of all, an act of faith. It is done for motives of faith, it is done because we appreciate the goodness and love of God. We make a deliberate choice between God and the temptation; and we put our foot on the temptation, that we may hold fast by God. Every single act of resisting temptation obtains merit and reward in the sight of God, and they who are the most tempted obtain the most merit, if they faithfully resist; so that the life that is harassed and buffeted with temptations without ceasing, if we persevere, is laying up perpetually more and more of merit before God, and more and more of reward in eternal life. And every such act of resistance to temptation is an act of love to God. Though we say nothing, our actions are always breathing upwards. "O my God, I would rather die than do this; and that, for Thy sake." And every time we so act, God interprets it as an act of love to Himself. He knows us as our Lord knew Peter, when he said, "Lord, thou knowest all things — thou knowest that I love thee." (John 21:17).
And once more. It is an act of self-mortification. We are mortifying ourselves in the doing of it; and when we mortify ourselves, that act is acceptable in the sight of God. It is the spirit of the Cross, it is an inward crucifixion of the flesh, of its affections and concupiscences, which is the mark of a true Christian. So, as I said before, though a man were walking in the furnace of temptations of every kind, yet if he resists them he is making acts of faith, love, and self-mortification all the day long, increasing his merit before God, and the reward that is laid up for him in Heaven.
5. And the other effect is this — that God uses those very temptations as the means of our sanctification. You remember St. Paul says: "Lest I should be lifted up by the multitude of the revelations, God gave me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me. And for this cause I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me; but he said: my grace is sufficient for thee, for strength is made perfect in infirmity" (2 Cor. 12:7-9) — that is to say, that God made use of his temptations to perfect him in sanctity.
First of all, He humbles us by them. There is nothing that gives self-knowledge so much as temptation. Until a man is tried, nobody knows what is in him. It is an old proverb. Until a man is tried in temptation, he does not know himself. He does not know how he will act in any circumstances, except those of his ordinary life, until he is tried. A man who thinks that he is afar off from being proud, let him find himself superior to his neighbors; a man who thinks he is in no danger of being covetous, let him suddenly become rich; a man who thinks he is in no danger of falling into particular temptations someday finds himself surrounded by them — he then learns what he is. Some man who thinks he could never tell a lie is taken all of a sudden — he falls from his sincerity. Now temptation teaches us to know what we are. It throws a light in upon our hearts, and we learn that before God we are spotted and stained, and full of tumultuous affections and passions, with crookedness in the will, darkness in the understanding; and when we come to the knowledge of this, it breaks down the loftiness of our vainglory. It is a very unpleasant discovery, but very wholesome — there is nothing so salutary as for a man to find his own great instability, that he cannot trust himself. When he has come to know that he cannot trust himself, then he has come to know his need of the grace of God; and not till then.
We read in the life of St. Philip Neri two most instructive passages — the one is this: he used to have a habit of saying, "O my God, keep Thy hand on my head; for if Thou shouldst let me go, I should break loose and do Thee all manner of harm. The wound in Thy side is large, but I should make it larger." He had such a sense of his own instability, and of his own weakness by nature, that unless the grace of the Holy Spirit sanctified and sustained him, he knew he could not stand; and that if he fell, there was no knowing to what he might go. This grew upon him all his life; so that in a sickness in which they thought he was near to die, he prayed that God would raise him up, that he might do a little more good before he died. He was raised up; but some years afterwards he fell again sick unto death, as all about him believed. And for what did he pray then? "O my God, take me away, that I may do no more harm." He had learned to know himself profoundly. Temptations and trials had made him understand his own nature, and in the sight of God he was becoming humbler and holier every day.
Next, God uses temptations to chastise us; for the temptations which beset us are nine times in ten the effects and the consequences of the faults and sins of our life past. God makes use of the sins and faults we have committed in past years — in childhood, boyhood, youth — to scourge and to humble us in our manhood and old age: and He thereby brings to our memory things we would have forgotten.
Lastly, He uses temptations to awaken and excite in our hearts a hatred of sin; and nothing makes us hate sin so much. When once we have turned away from sin and are no longer consciously guilty, then the hatefulness, hideousness, deformity, the blackness of sin, becomes more and more terrible to us the longer we live. In whose eyes is sin the most hateful? Is it hateful in the eyes of the sinner, or is it hateful in the eyes of God? In proportion as we are free from sin, in that proportion sin becomes hateful. Just as we grow in light and in grace, in purity, in sanctification, just in that measure sin is hateful to us; and just as we are tempted we learn to know more and more the hatefulness of sin.
We begin first by hating sin in itself, but we do not stop with that abstract hatred. Our next hatred is against what we were once. We remember what we were once upon a time, we recollect what our boyhood or youth was, and there it is before us. The sun, by the photograph, does not take so precise and so terrible a portrait as the conscience, enlightened by the Holy Ghost, takes of our past life. When we see what we once were before the grace of God converted us, the sins we committed in all their darkness and in all their multitude, in all their perversity and in all their ingratitude — when all this is before us and we see our past, the character we once had, hanging like a portrait on the wall, drawn by the pencil of the Holy Ghost, in all its hideousness, we hate ourselves. We hate what we were then; and we hate everything that reminds us of it — the places, the persons, the memorials, the tokens — everything associated with it. Ay, the music and the pictures, and the objects of sight, the books, and tales, and poems, the persons whose influence and whispers were in time past the darkness and downfall of our soul — all this is hateful. And we go on further: our present self, our present character, full of imperfections, ay, and more than that — and the more we know ourself in the light of God's presence, the more we shall come to have that humble sense of self-abhorrence, which, in the sight of God, is the mark of a true penitent.
Now, brethren, I have given you the way to distinguish between sins and temptations, and I say with confidence that anybody who can look upon his past and upon his present, with this feeling of hatred, and sorrow, and humility, may console himself with the conviction that whatever temptations beset him from without, his heart and his will are intensely and firmly set against these temptations, and that sin has no part in him: "It is no more I, but sin that dwelleth in me." (Rom. 7:17). I then have given you the reasons, first, that temptation is inevitable, that temptation is universal, that temptation which is not consented to is not sin, that temptation resisted is a perpetual increase of merit, and temptation resisted brings a continual growth of sanctification.
I have now only two simple counsels to add. All this is true, subject to two conditions. The one is that we avoid the occasions of sin. You know what the word means, There is a difference between an occasion of sin, and a temptation to sin. A temptation to sin means a positive danger, present here and now; but an occasion of sin may mean something lawful in itself which may lead us on to the danger of sin. The occasions may sometimes be lawful things altogether, innocent things which, like slippery places in our path, deceive our tread.
There are three reasons why we are bound to avoid the occasions of sin. The first is this, that no man, when he makes his confession kneeling under a crucifix, can make a good confession, or can escape the risk of a sacrilegious confession, and no man can receive a valid absolution, who does not, at the time when he accuses himself of his sins, make a firm, sincere, and steadfast resolution to avoid those sins and all that leads to them. If he has not got the will to give up the occasions which have caused him in past times to sin, and to commit the very sins of which he is now asking absolution in the presence of God, it is a perfect certainty that he has not the sorrow which is necessary for the sins he has committed.
Now, there are two kinds of occasions: there are some which are called necessary, and some that are called voluntary. The distinction is this: let me suppose for a moment that some of you are tempted to unbelief — I trust in God none of you are — but let me suppose it is possible, and that you have a brother living in the same house with you, who, unfortunately being an unbeliever, pours out all kinds of infidel objections and rationalistic doubts against the revelation of God. You cannot leave your home you cannot send him out of it — there he is. You are obliged to dwell with him. It is an occasion of temptation to you, and may be an occasion of sin. You cannot get rid of it — it is necessary — there it abides — it is beyond your power and control. God will not call you to an account for not leaving your home under those circumstances. But if you voluntarily and willingly seek conversation on those matters with such a person, that is your voluntary act; and if you do so you are responsible; and unless you steadfastly resolve not to do so, you cannot have absolution of those sins of doubt against faith, into which you have voluntarily plunged yourself. I give this as an example. Apply it in your own heart to every form of sin and of temptation. I will not particularize, but you know perfectly well how easily you may transfer the example I have given to every other kind. It is necessary, then, to your valid absolution that you should steadfastly resolve to avoid every voluntary occasion of sin.
Secondly, it is a part of the reparation due from you to our Divine Saviour, that, having offended Him, you will not allow yourselves to be drawn back into the same occasions. The spirit of reparation which you owe to Him, after He has absolved you in His Precious Blood, is steadfastly to resist, and watchfully to avoid all those circumstances and occasions which have led you to offend Him before. We read in the book of Acts that the Christians at Ephesus were given to what are called "curious arts" (Acts 19:19), omens, magic, superstition, and the like. When they were illuminated by the Faith, they brought their books and burned them in a public place. The people of Milan, after a mission, collected together their foolish books, romances, poetry, bad books and bad pictures, masks, dresses used in masquerades, musical instruments used in vanity and folly, the luxurious and ostentatious ornaments of their persons, and a multitude of other things, as cards, dice, the means of gambling, folly, and loss of time, whatsoever had been to them causes of temptation — they brought them all together into the Piazza del Duomo, and made of them a great bonfire.
I am not going to ask you to make a great bonfire in the streets of London; but what they did materially, you may do spiritually and morally, every one of you. You know, and will find out, what things have been the cause and occasion of sin to you, not only in deed, but in word, in thought, in imagination. Give them up — have nothing to do with them — put them far from you — turn your face from them — put your foot on them; and then, if your temptations recur, you may look up in the face of your Heavenly Father and your Divine Master, and take the peace of knowing that the recurrence of those temptations is chastisement and humiliation, and not your present fault. I do not wish to go into particulars; to do so would lead me into minute details which it is well rather to avoid. It is better rather to give principles and rules, because men of mature mind, persons of Christian faith, will be able to make an application; but I will mention the names of a few of these things.
I ask, first of all, in the use of your food, how much money is wasted in the needless indulgence of the palate? What delicacy and fastidiousness of pleasing the taste is to be found where nobody would suspect it! How much money is wasted in drink; and I am not speaking to you as I should speak if I were in some other part of my flock; but I must say that, even in those who are educated, who belong to the upper region or stratum of society, there is an amount of excessive indulgence in those things which blunts the intelligence, unnerves the will, relaxes the habits of life, deadens the heart, extinguishes the spirit of piety, disturbs the peace of homes, and may lead on to worse. I am bound to tell you openly that, even among persons of education, refinement and of birth, every priest in his experience, and I myself in mine, have known terrible examples of this bondage to drink, which has continued even unto death. How many miserable souls have died, bound in chains of a vice which began perhaps with habits like your own, never suspected it at first, until at last they become virtually indissoluble.
Therefore, I say, in your food, in eating and drinking, be simple, be self-denying. Have the high common sense of Christians; do not care for such things; give no thought to them. The Church enjoins fasting and abstinence; but fasting and abstinence seem dying out. Why? Because people are growing so self-indulgent and so fanciful. Their health will not stand it, and their physician says they cannot endure it, and sometimes even their confessor is besieged until he gives way. There is a law of liberty by which we are to be judged at the Last Day. St. James says: "So speak ye and do as being to be judged by the law of liberty." (James 2:12). Now I am appealing to you in the liberty of Christians, in the generosity and gratitude of those who have been redeemed by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. I say, deny yourselves in these trivial but dangerous things.
Next, there is a subject too large for me to do more than touch — I mean your dress. I put it first upon the ground of costliness and expense and waste of money; but I may not put it on that only. Dear brethren, I always avoid entering into details of this matter. I have nothing to do with colors, forms, and fashions — these are things which belong to you; but I have to do with the morals of dress. I have to do with the faults that spring from luxury in dress; and the sin to which luxury and ostentation of dress may lead — that I have to deal with; and what I always try to do is to lay down counsels of broad Christian common sense. I only wish you knew where fashions come from — from some obscure room, in some luxurious and corrupt city, where, by a sort of secret society of folly, rules are laid down and decrees come forth year after year — which are followed with a servility and, I may say, with a want of Christian matronly dignity, so that the foolish fashion that some foolish person has foolishly invented is propagated all over the civilized countries of Europe. From winter to winter and spring to spring our nearest friends are hardly to be recognized. They are dressed up and built up and masqueraded in a way, sometimes, to provoke laughter, or pity, or regret.
I must tell you what once happened to me. I was walking through one of our parks and I saw three persons, of whom one was dressed according to the novelty of some fashion then coming in, and there followed behind two plain working men. I heard one say to the other, "She only does it to be looked at!" Remember these words of just reproof. That is the estimate which is formed of fashion by the good solid sense of the English people. They pity and despise it. Our forefathers and the women of another age did not bend and undulate with every wind that is wafted over the sea. They dressed and attired themselves as Christian women, taking counsel of their good sense, and attiring themselves as was befitting their station in life, without singularity of plainness, which is one of the affectations of vanity, and without a servile copying of fashion, which is the spirit of this world.
This will give you certain principles, and all I will add is, that there was a time when in Lent people wore black. I do not say it made them more pious or penitent, but I do say it is more in accordance with the time of humiliation and fasting than the gewgaws and glaring colors, peacocks' tails and rainbows, which are to be seen not only in our streets, but round about our altars. There was a custom only a little while ago (and it prevails now in Catholic countries) that no woman came into the house of God except her head was covered by the wearing of a veil, or at least some such covering of the head. It is enjoined in Scripture, and enjoined too by a law on the door of every church in Rome, ay, and at this moment I believe it is still to be found there. I doubt even if the revolution has taken it down. I remember that as long as Rome was the City of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, women were wont to come to the church in fitting attire. I leave this again to you. Now I have done; this is a subject beyond me, except so far as the morals of dress. All the rest of it I leave to your good sense and to your piety.
I cannot dwell on the other points, but I would say: study well what you can do, in a spirit of liberty and generosity, in the expenditure of money. See how many thousands are in want! The hospitals of London will not contain the one-fifteenth part of those that are mortally sick; and we go about spending money without thinking of those who are dying round about us. There are tens of thousands of children perishing in the streets without Christian education; and we can, with all possible calmness, go and squander our money upon ourselves. I apply the same to your pleasures. I am no rigorist and no puritan, and I love to see people happy and to look on at their innocent enjoyment; but there are some kinds of enjoyments and amusements, some kinds of tastes, which a Christian instinct forbids us to approve. Dear brethren, I hope you will consult Holy Scripture and your conscience, and see what kind of amusement and what kind of pleasure you will look back on calmly from your deathbed, and what kind of enjoyment will give you peace in that hour. Lastly, I would say to you, make a resolution this Lent — for Lent is now finishing. We shall meet again on Good Friday to meditate upon the Passion of our Divine Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Make now some one resolution of self-denial out of your full Christian liberty; offer up something as a memorial. I will not prescribe it; choose it for yourselves.
Prayer, piety, watchfulness, self-denial, and purity of heart — these five things will keep your will firm, and if your will be firm it will expel every temptation that enters by the senses, or by the passions, or by the affections, as the flame of a furnace which consumes everything that approaches to its mouth. It will expel and cast out of you all things contrary to your sanctification.
Remember then what our Lord has promised. He suffered temptation that He might have a fellow feeling with you; and you may appeal to Him in your temptations. You may say, "O my Lord, who didst suffer in the desert for my sake, Thou seest the power of this temptation which is upon me. Have pity on me; uphold me, for of myself I cannot stand." He knows how to feel with those who are tempted, and in the midst of your temptations He is perpetually saying to each one of you: "He that overcometh, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of my God. He that overcometh shall be a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out. To him that overcometh I will give to eat of the hidden manna and a white counter, and on the white counter a new name written, which name knoweth no man save only him that receiveth it. He that overcometh shall sit down in my throne, even as I also overcame and am sat down in the throne of my Father." (Apoc. 2:7, 17; 3:12, 21).
Notes
1. See Pages 70 and 71 and Notes 1 and 2, Page 88.
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