Besides, penance renders a man invincible against his spiritual foes. The mortified man is like a horse in the open fields. You may approach him with a halter in hand, and almost lay your hands upon him, but he easily escapes your grasp. {342} So the devil may approach a man who has gained mastery over his appetites and inordinate affections, with his temptations, and the opportunity of committing sin ready at hand, but he has no power to capture or bind him. But the self-indulgent man has not the moral life to resist, nor the strength to escape; he is easily led into sin and made the slave of the devil. The mortified man is like a flower which draws nothing but its necessary nourishment from the earth, and that through a slender stem, while it opens wide its bosom to the light and air of heaven; so he, by self-denial, has narrowed all those avenues of his soul which lie earthward, while his whole mind is open to the contemplation of God, and his heart is filled with the taste of His sweetness. Moreover, it renders the practice of prayer easy. All the irregular movements of our lower nature being subdued, the soul thus disengaged is able to think steadfastly on God, and attend to his inspiration, according to those words of the divine Spouse in Scripture: "_I will lead her into the solitude, and will speak to her heart, and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth_." [Footnote 151] [Footnote 151: Osee ii., 14.] [Transcriber's note: Osee refers to Hosea.] {343} According to the experience of all spiritual men, the spirit of prayer can only spring from, mortification. "Give more study to mortification," says Lewis da Ponte, "than to contemplation, for an unmortified person seeks after the spirit of prayer and cannot find it, whilst prayer itself seeks the man who is truly mortified, and knows how to find him." Saint Ignatius once heard one say in the praise of a great servant of God: "He is a great man of prayer." The saint replied, "No, he is a man of great mortification." And on another occasion he remarked, that "a quarter of an hour spent in prayer is sufficient to unite a mortified man closely to God; whereas an unmortified man would not obtain this in two hours." "He who does not live according to the corruption of the senses," says St. John of the Cross, "has the consolation to see all the operations of the powers of his soul tend to the contemplation of God as to their centre." Finally, it fills the soul with spiritual consolations, according to the words of Holy Scripture. "_Who is this that cometh up from the desert flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?_" [Footnote 152] [Footnote 152: Cant. viii., 5.] {344}