Of the third evil: the work of the devil through the Imaginary Apprehensions of the Memory.

From what I have already written, we may gather and learn how great is that evil which the devil inflicts on the soul through these Supernatural Apprehensions. Not only can he represent to the memory and the fancy many false notions and forms which shall seem good and true, impressing them on the mind and senses with great effect and certainty by his suggestions—and this in such a way as to make his representations be taken. for what they pretend to be, for as he changes himself into an angel, he will seem to be light to the soul—but also in the very truths of God he can tempt us in divers ways, by communicating unruly motions about them to our desires and affections, whether spiritual or sensual. For if the soul takes pleasure in these apprehensions, it is very easy for Satan to increase our affections and desires, and to plunge us into spiritual gluttony and other evils.

And that he may succeed the better, he is wont to inspire and fill the senses with delight, sweetness, and pleasure, in

the things of God; so that the soul, dazzled and enervated by that sweetness, may become blind through pleasure, and set itself more upon sweetness than upon love—at least not so much upon love—and attach greater importance to these apprehensions than to that detachment and emptiness, which are to be found in Faith and Hope and the Love of God. He doeth all this that, starting from that point, he may, by little and little, delude the soul, and bring it to believe, with great readiness, all his lies. For the soul that is blind considers falsehood to be falsehood no longer, evil not to be evil, because it puts darkness for light, and light for darkness, and falls into endless disorders. That which was once wine is turned into vinegar, as well in the natural as in the moral and spiritual order. All this comes upon the soul, because it did not in the beginning deny itself in the pleasure ministered by supernatural things. And as this pleasure was at first not great or not so hurtful, the soul was not sufficiently afraid of it, but suffered it to remain and grow, as the grain of mustard grows into a great tree. For a slight error in the beginning becomes a great error in the end. The soul that will escape this evil, the work of the devil,

r.... must not take ‘any pleasure in these apprehensions, for if it

does the result will most certainly be blindness, and then a fall; for delight and sweetness, of their own proper nature, brutalise and blind the soul. This is the meaning of David

when he said, ‘ Perhaps darkness shall cover me; and night

shall be my light in my pleasures;’* that is, perhaps darkness shall cover me in my pleasures, and I shall take night

for my light.

* Ps. exxxviii, 11.

Q 2

weak-

evil,—