[12] "The power of divine grace, like that of the Adversary, is impulsive, not compulsive, that the free power of our will may be entirely preserved. Wherefore, for the evil things which a man does by the influence of Satan, it is not Satan that receives the punishment, but the man himself; forasmuch as he was not involuntarily forced into those things, but was consenting in his own will. In the same manner also with respect to what is good, Grace does not ascribe it to itself, but to the man, and it therefore assigns to him glory, as the cause of good to himself. For grace does not so constrain by compulsive force as to render a man's will incapable of altering; but though it be present to him, it gives way to his free and arbitrary power, that his will may be manifested how it is disposed to good or to evil. For the law is not applied to our nature, but to our free-will, which is able to convert itself either to good or to evil."--Macarius, _Institutes of Christian Perfection_, Bk. VII, chap. iii. (Penn's Trans., London, 1816.) [13] Scupoli, _The Spiritual Combat_, chap. xiv. [14] "I shall fulfil Thy Will if, for Thy Love, I contradict my own, which Thou wilt not in any way constrain, but dost leave it perfectly free that I, _by voluntarily and constantly subjecting it to Thine_, may become dearer and more full in Thy sight."--St. Catherine of Siena, _Dialogue on Consummated Perfection_, in Drane's History of St. Catherine, Vol. II, p. 348. [15] Faber, _Growth in Holiness_, chap. xvi. [16] St. Francis de Sales, _Spiritual Letters_, cxiv. [17] Baker, _Sancta Sophia_, pp. 284-286. See also Hilton, _The Scale of Perfection_, Bk. 2, Sec. 1, chap. viii. [18] Using anger as an illustration, Father Baker enters into a detailed description of what may happen, and yet the soul be free from sin. Perhaps there is not one of us who can read the following words without a sense of deep gratitude and relief concerning not infrequent experiences of our own. He says: "A person being moved to anger, though he find an unquiet representation in the imagination, and a violent heat and motions about the heart, as likewise an aversion in sensitive nature against the person that hath given the provocation; yet if, notwithstanding, he refrains himself from breaking forth into words of impatience to which his passion would urge him, and withal contradicts designs of revenge suggested by passion, such an one, practicing internal prayer and mortification, is to esteem himself not to have consented to the motions of corrupt nature, although besides the inward motion of the appetite [i.e., the inferior will], he could not hinder marks of his passion from appearing in his eyes and the colour of his countenance."--_Sancta Sophia_, pp. 237-238. [19] Pusey, _Lenten Sermons_, p. 264. {128} CHAPTER IX IN THE HOUR OF BATTLE