Father Augustine Baker says likewise, "The simple passing of such thoughts or imaginations in the mind is no sin at all, though they should rest there never so long without advertence, but only the giving of deliberate consent to them"; and to constitute this deliberate consent he requires that the mind must be "fully awake,"--that is, to the fact that these were of the nature of sin,--"and had reflected on them."[17] Our only hope lies in a stubborn refusal of consent. Our safety lies in fixing the will on this one thing. Never mind how fiercely the enemy may assault. He may deliver charge after charge with a rapidity that bewilders the soul, and makes it grow sick and dizzy. We may seem to be beaten down under his feet, and all the storms and billows of a fierce and terrible temptation may sweep over us, and yet so long as from the {125} midst of the confusion we cry, "I will it not," the soul is safe.[18] The refusal of consent should be instant upon the first consciousness of temptation. It is of great peril to dally even for a moment with the sinful suggestion. Not only does it encourage the tempter on the one hand, and weaken our powers of resistance on the other, but deliberate dallying with evil is a sin in itself. It means that an outpost has been surrendered, and even though in the end we reject the main suggestion, yet we have by no means come off unscathed. We are less capable of resisting the next attack than we were before; for "the imagination of sin, the {126} dallying with it, the indulgence of the senses, short of what the soul must own to itself to be a grave fall, steeps and drags the soul more thoroughly in sin, immerses it in a thicker and more blinding mist, interpenetrates more the whole moral texture of the soul with evil, than, at an earlier stage, does the actual sin itself."[19] It is not always, however, with confusion and noise of battle that Satan seeks to force our consent. Often the hardest temptations to endure are those in which he comes very gently, and with long continued pressure seeks to weary, and discourage, and break down the will. It is a fatal error into which scrupulous souls are not infrequently led, to think that the long continuance of the suggestion, or even of the delight with which our lower nature responds, constitutes consent. The devils have a mysterious power, allowed them by God, of holding a temptation before the soul continuously or repeatedly, and we are often as powerless to put it away as we are to refuse to see an object which is actually reflected on the retina of the eye.