It is also a discouragement to the enemy to see that his schemes are thus understood and exposed. He loves ever to work in the dark, and it is a matter of common experience that he often abandons a plan of temptation when he finds it {156} has been detected and discussed by those against whom he has been plotting. III. _Signs of the Soul's Victory_ In the course of the struggle there are many circumstances and conditions by which we can test how the battle is going. We shall consider some of these, choosing certain ones which Satan often uses for our discouragement by presenting them to us in a wrong light. It is a favourite device of his to snatch at the very circumstance which a good God, ever tenderly solicitous of our safety, allows for the consolation of His faithful soldiers, and by presenting it from a false point of view, turn it into an occasion of scruple and unnerving anxiety. (1) Continuance and increased severity of attack is proof that the will has not yielded to the temptation. An army does not direct its assaults against an enemy who has already surrendered. So rather than be frightened, we should draw comfort from the fact of continued temptation. "It is a good sign," wrote St. Francis de Sales to Madame de Chantal, "when the enemy storms so lustily at the door; it proves that he is not attaining his end. If he had attained it, he would {157} not clamour any more; he would go in and be satisfied. Keep this in mind so as to avoid scruples."[11] But although Satan's fiercer malignance of attack be a sign that the soul has not yielded, it is far from being the kind of sign that justifies our pausing in the struggle. If the tempter uses renewed energy and fierceness in his assaults, the soul, in order that it may continue in safety, must also employ a corresponding increase of energy in bringing into action the increased grace that the Holy Spirit stands always ready to give to those who ask Him. It is just for this that the Blessed Spirit waits upon and presides over the conflict. "Hence gather we this comfort," writes the saintly Andrewes for our consolation, "that the Holy Ghost is not a stander-by as a stranger when we are tempted, _tanquam otiosus spectator_, but He leads us by the hand, and stands by as a faithful assistant."[12] (2) A sense of fear that we have consented, or at the thought of the possibility of consenting, is an excellent indication that we are, as yet, free from the sin to which we are being tempted. He who has actually entered into the sin and made it his own by a deliberate operation of his will, {158} has not ordinarily the attitude of fear towards his sin. The act of consent brings a certain complacency with respect to the sin, and a blindness of spiritual vision, which leaves no room for fear, and which is only disturbed by penitence.