fornication?" The venerable saint replied, "It knocketh, but it passeth on." As the centuries went by the same strenuous anxiety to guard chastity still remained, and the old struggle constantly reappeared (see, e.g., Migne's _Dictionnaire d'Ascétisme_, art. "Démon, Tentation du"). Some saints, it is true, like Luigi di Gonzaga, were so angelically natured that they never felt the sting of sexual desire. These seem to have been the exception. St. Benedict and St. Francis experienced the difficulty of subduing the flesh. St. Magdalena de Pozzi, in order to dispel sexual desires, would roll on thorny bushes till the blood came. Some saints kept a special cask of cold water in their cells to stand in (Lea, _Sacerdotal Celibacy_, vol. i, p. 124). On the other hand, the Blessed Angela de Fulginio tells us in her _Visiones_ (cap. XIX) that, until forbidden by her confessor, she would place hot coals in her secret parts, hoping by material fire to extinguish the fire of concupiscence. St. Aldhelm, the holy Bishop of Sherborne, in the eighth century, also adopted a homeopathic method of treatment, though of a more literal kind, for William of Malmsbury states that when tempted by the flesh he would have women to sit and lie by him until he grew calm again; the method proved very successful, for the reason, it was thought, that the Devil felt he had been made a fool of. In time the Catholic practice and theory of asceticism became more formalized and elaborated, and its beneficial effects were held to extend beyond the individual himself. "Asceticism from the Christian point of view," writes Brénier de Montmorand in an interesting study ("Ascétisme et Mysticisme," _Revue Philosophique_, March, 1904) "is nothing else than all the therapeutic measures making for moral purification. The Christian ascetic is an athlete struggling to transform his corrupt nature and make a road to God through the obstacles due to his passions and the world. He is not working in his own interests alone, but--by virtue of the reversibility of merit which compensates that of solidarity in error--for the good and for the salvation of the whole of society."