Question III: Concerning Those Tempted

I. What temptation is. - The incitement of temptation is the common lot of men in the present life, from which not even the most perfect are altogether freed. Temptation is an incitement to sin, or toward a created good proposed to the will, by which it is allured or inclined to violate virtue or a precept. It can be light, grave, most grave, according as the force of moving is small, vehement, or most vehement for inciting the will. That force depends on the nature of the thing, on the vividness of the representation, and on the intensity of the appetite.

Temptation arises either from an intrinsic principle, namely from the corruption of nature, especially of the flesh, Jas. I, 14-15; or from an extrinsic principle: either by way of an object alluring externally, and thus it is from the world, by whose temporal goods, that is, riches, honors and glory, or power, and pleasures and false principles man is allured to sinning; or by way of an agent which internally moves the imagination to representing evil and excites the appetite to a perverse motion of passion, so that reason and will may thus be drawn to evil, and in this way it is from the devil, although he can also appear externally, which nevertheless very rarely happens. Concerning these, cf. the treatise on Sins.

Temptations can be from ourselves, that is, from our evil concupiscence, and from the devil at the same time, and these temptations are more common. But if they exceed the customary passions of our powers, they are attributed to the devil alone and are preternatural; these occur more rarely.

Now it rather often happens that penitents are cast down in soul because of temptations which they frequently and vehemently suffer; these now must be taught the necessity of perpetual combat, the end and utility of temptations, and the manner of resisting them.¹

¹ Cf. St. Thomas, I, q. 114, a. 2; II Sent. d. 21, q. 1, a. 1; in ep. ad Hebr. VI, 15, l. 3; Reuter, Neo-conf., n. 244; Aertnijs, Th. P., nn. 168-175; Marc, Th. M., I, n. 378; Tanquerey, de Pecc., nn. 443-448; Lehmkuhl, Th. M., II, nn. 629-632; Noldin, Th. M., I, nn. 327-329; Prummer, Th. M., I, nn. 385-389; Hense, Die Versuchungen. Likewise the theological inquiry La Tentation, by Fr. Masson in the periodical La Vie spirituelle, Nov. and Dec. 1923; Jan., Feb., July, Sept. 1924; Feb., March, April 1926.

II. Necessity of temptation. - The Scriptures teach the necessity of temptation, Job VII, 1; Eccli. II, 1; Tob. XII, 13. But the reason of this necessity is that God proposes immortal life both a) as a crown toward which we strive; but no crown is given without an opposing difficulty to be overcome; hence the Apostle, II Tim. II, 5: "No one will be crowned unless he has fought lawfully"; and b) as the reward of service for proving our fidelity: Deut. XIII, 3: "The Lord your God tempts you, that it may be made manifest whether you love Him or not with all your heart and with all your soul."

Therefore God tempts us or permits us to be tempted for proving fidelity, but not like the devil, for deceiving us and leading us into sin, according to Jas. I, 13.

III. Ends of temptation. - Therefore the ends or utilities on account of which God permits temptations are the good of His faithful and just ones, namely our good, and indeed manifold. For temptations:

1. give man knowledge of himself, show his fragility and need of divine help, and thus admonish him concerning humility, beat down his pride, and teach him both how much he ought to distrust himself and how much he ought to trust God;

2. teach him the envy of the devil, and to exercise continual vigilance and mortify the passions;

3. render him more fervent in the service of God, and free him from torpor and softness;

4. induce him into love of the heavenly fatherland, where there are no snares, nor struggles, but peace and full possession of life always going to endure;

5. join the soul to the faithful God, who does not permit one to be tempted above that which we can bear, but accommodates helps to temptations and with temptation makes the outcome of help, I Cor. X, 13, and thus raises one to confidence and hope of victory, and confers tranquility of soul; for grave temptations are rather a sign that we are in the friendship of God;

6. furnish testimony, increase, and consolidation of virtue, because by repeated strong and heroic acts the habit is increased and brought to perfection;

7. have an opportunity for satisfying for sins and for being purified from their remnants: for where a man indulged evil affections and delights, there they subject him to pains and afflictions;

8. enrich us with many and splendid crowns if we conquer, according to Jas. I, 12; Wis. III, 5; Apoc. III, 21; thus by increasing merit, they also increase future glory: for as often as we conquer, so often we shall be crowned;

9. instruct man, not only for himself, but also for others, Eccli. XXXIV, 9; and St. Gregory, Mor., l. 23, c. 27;

10. finally they manifest more splendidly the divine attributes: power, mercy, wisdom which draws good from evil, justice which repays according to works.

IV. General means against temptations of whatever kind are humility, prayer, and fortitude. Humility removes the impediments of assisting grace: for God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble, Jas. IV, 6. Prayer obtains the helps of grace, Mt. VI, 13; Luke XI, 4. Fortitude uses them, removes pusillanimities, Phil. IV, 13; I Pet. V, 9, and presumptions, and takes care that someone not rashly expose himself to dangers.

From these the following general rules can be deduced for practice, to be suggested by the confessor to the penitent:

1. If temptation attacks you, repel it immediately from the beginning, lest, if it is negligently permitted to grow strong, it increase with such power that victory becomes very difficult. Therefore follow the prescription of the Lord: Pray that you enter not into temptation, and immediately flee to the mercy of God, confidently entrusting your infirmity to Him; or turn the soul to an honorable external occupation, or elicit an act of virtue, e.g., of charity or contrition, or of the opposed virtue.

2. Relying on divine help, be of great soul in temptations, mindful that you can do all things in God: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you," Jas. IV, 7; Phil. IV, 13. For if the devil adverts you to be fainthearted, he will assail more, promising himself already the victory which great confidence in God would supply to the one tempted.

3. Beware altercation with the enemy: for altercation will increase the temptation, disturb the soul, and the enemy will wrap it in darkness.

4. Constantly exercise the virtue opposed to the temptation, by meditating on its beauty and the contrary baseness of the vice, and by increasing horror of the vice and esteem of the virtue.

5. Open especially troublesome temptations to the confessor or spiritual director: Satan hates nothing more than that his machinations not remain hidden; then God is accustomed to reward this act of humility by breaking temptations.

V. Diverse manner of fighting against temptations. - Since the genera of temptations are diverse, of which some cast in bitterness, others sweetly allure, the manner of fighting is also diverse. Against temptations of the former genus it profits to struggle not only defensively but also offensively, by seeking occasions of subduing them, e.g., anger, impatience, lust for vengeance, sloth, vain glory. But sweet temptations are conquered more safely by flight, that is, by calling the mind away, than by direct attack, e.g., against faith or chastity, so that they must be excluded from memory and their occasions removed. St. Thomas teaches this, II-II, q. 35, a. 1, ad 4: "Sin is always to be fled; but the attack of sin is sometimes to be overcome by fleeing, sometimes by resisting. By fleeing indeed, when continued thought increases the incentive of sin, as in lust, whence it is said, I Cor. VI, 18: flee fornication; but by resisting, when persevering thought removes the incentive of sin which comes from some light apprehension. And this happens in sloth: because the more we think concerning spiritual goods, the more pleasing they are rendered to us, from which sloth ceases."

Hence certain special rules can be established:

1. In temptations against chastity there is need of special caution lest you be disturbed or fear inordinately, and lest you apply the soul to baseness even for considering it, because thus you will increase the temptation; but immediately flee to God, to the wounds of Christ, to the last things, e.g., death and the punishments of hell, and apply the mind seriously and with all your powers to other honorable things, or even to external works and labors. But care must be taken that with a released soul you look upon Jesus, or upon one good idea, not the temptation; otherwise you increase it. It also helps to have recourse to the Blessed Virgin, the Guardian Angel, St. Joseph, St. Thomas, St. Aloysius, etc. After the temptation, it is by no means expedient anxiously to ruminate whether you consented to it, since the temptation could easily return.

2. In the same manner one must act in temptations against faith, namely every disputation is to be avoided, every weighing of the suggestions of the enemy; but immediately flee to prayer, elicit a firm act of faith, propose to undergo death rather than deviate from the faith. If nevertheless the temptation continues to vex, and consists in empty ideas and lighter doubts, let it be entirely contemned. But if there are difficulties which seem to have something solid, let the confessor set forth to the tempted person the motives of credibility of our faith, such as the holy and undefiled doctrine, the swift diffusion through the whole world by poor fishermen, the prophecies fulfilled concerning it, so many miracles, and the blood of so many thousands of martyrs, and other things diverse according to diverse dispositions, which are arguments clearer than light and manifestly reveal it to be true. Besides, to cultivated persons the reading of some book treating of the truth of the faith can be commended.

3. He who is tempted by the spirit of vengeance a) should flee and turn the mind away from the injury or annoyance inflicted, and then b) when the temptation ceases, act directly against it and correct the apprehension by which an injury, often small, is apprehended as great. Let him think of the ignominies received by Christ and those which have been inflicted on God; let him remember fragility, excuse the neighbor as far as he can, or even pray for him.

4. If a temptation against hope and confidence is excited concerning predestination or the foreknowledge of God, either plainly neglect it as a trick of the devil, or say internally: mine is to serve God; to dispose future things is not mine but the Father's, who sent His Son that I may have life and may have it more abundantly. No one has hoped in Him and been confounded... If I knew that I was predestined, or if predestination were in my hand, what would it be fitting for me to do? This I will do, and I will live.

5. If a temptation against charity is present concerning your dispositions: What would you choose and do if you had to sin or tolerate this or that evil? turn your soul to other things and contemn this thought as idle, or internally say that in this case God will not abandon you, but will lavish upon you greater strength, which is lacking to you for the moment.

6. If especially pious persons are tormented by impious thoughts, blasphemous thoughts against God, imprecatory thoughts against the neighbor, obscene imaginations and movements even concerning images or sacred things, fears or even despair concerning salvation, let them altogether despise these, like scruples, and consider them nothing, so that they neither examine nor confess them, and placidly turn the mind elsewhere. For fear and attentive consideration increase and cause them.

VI. Signs of resistance or non-consent. - Signs by which it is discerned that someone did not consent to temptation, or at least not fully, are indicated by moralists: a) if someone, adverting or fully adverting to the temptation, immediately repels it; b) if, more fully adverting, he is immediately distressed or saddened; c) if, immediately when he is distressed, he still finds himself so habitually constituted that he would rather die than sin mortally; d) if he easily could have executed the sin and did not execute it; e) if a God-fearing man, or one who is accustomed to be so affected that he would rather die than expressly sin mortally, doubts whether he consented; f) if someone remembers that he proceeded very timidly and hesitantly; g) if he was half asleep, not fully in possession of himself, and judges that he would not have done it if he had been fully awake; h) if he doubts whether he was in possession of himself, awake, drunk.

In doubt: no consent or imperfect consent is presumed among God-fearing men and those who are accustomed to be so disposed that they would rather die than sin mortally; if they had consented perfectly, ordinarily they would not doubt. - On the contrary, perfect consent is presumed among those who are of more lax conscience and easily fall into some sin; if these had resisted the temptation better than they are accustomed, they would certainly have known that.

VII. Observations. - 1) Let the confessor not omit to suggest the aforesaid means to penitents, especially recidivists, lest he follow the example of those confessors for whom it is enough to have heard from the mouth of penitents that they no longer wish to sin, and, with no other speech interposed, they absolve them, Aertnijs, Th. M., I, de Pecc., n. 238.

2. Let him teach penitents to distinguish three stages in the process of temptation: namely a) suggestion, or only the representation of evil in the imagination or even the intellect, a simple proposal of evil; b) indeliberate delight arising from the suggestion in the sensitive appetite, or even in the rational appetite, by which the temptation pleases, and sensible commotion and organic impression by which it is made pleasant; c) reason now adverting the malice, an act of the free will: either dissent, by which it casts away and repels the temptation, or consent, by which directly or indirectly it takes complacence in the temptation itself or admits, approves, or retains it. Now sin is present only in consent; for this is not in the intellect alone, or in the sensitive appetite, or in the indeliberate and spontaneous inclination of the rational appetite, but in the free will alone, which deliberately and freely adheres to evil. Hence let the confessor say: to feel temptation or to be conscious of it is not sin, but to consent is, Council of Trent, sess. 5, can. 5; not sense or pleasantness, but consent and complacence.

It should be noted, however, that the devil can fashion a certain imagination of consent, even for merely spiritual temptations, as concerning blasphemy, contempt of God, etc., and affect the soul with a certain sense of complacence, so that the man seems to himself to have consented. This is discerned if, when he adverts, he immediately detests the temptation from the soul.

3. Nevertheless let the confessor admonish that it is illicit rashly to expose oneself to temptation without a just cause, which must be proportioned to the gravity of the temptation, that is, to the incitement and danger of sinning, considered not only absolutely and in itself, but also relatively for this or that man. And indeed:

a) to expose oneself to grave temptation or proximate danger of sinning is licit only if a grave reason is present and at the same time a founded hope of overcoming the temptation;

b) on the contrary it is a grave sin freely to expose oneself, without sufficient reason, to grave temptation and proximate danger of sinning;

c) for incurring light temptation and light danger a light reason suffices.

4. Let him admonish that before temptation vigilance is to be exercised, 1 Pet. V, 8; Mt. XXVI, 41, for forestalling them; for this a) occasions of sinning are to be fled; b) useless wanderings of soul and idlenesses are to be avoided, from which dangerous phantasms often arise; indeed c) the faculties of the soul and also the passions are to be positively turned toward good, useful, and religious things.

5. After the temptation has ended or been overcome, one must not indulge pride, but in humility thanks are to be rendered to God, by whose help we are able to report victory. - Let there not be instituted at length an examination concerning consent given or denied. - Nor is it ever expedient to collapse in soul, but confidently to flee to the mercy of God.