Page:Spiritualcombat.djvu/25

10 must not only acknowledge that you are destitute of it, but also that you are wholly unable of yourself to gain it.

In this way, present yourself again and again before the Divine Majesty, with the assurance that of His goodness He will grant your request; endure the delay, however long, which His providence may appoint, and persevere; and without doubt you shall obtain it.

The third is, to live in continual fear of yourself, of your own judgment, of your great proneness to sin; and of the countless enemies, against whom you are of yourself utterly powerless, of their great experience in this warfare, their wiles, their capability of transforming themselves into angels of light, their innumerable snares and traps which they secretly spread in the very way itself of holiness.

The fourth is, that as soon as you have had any fall, you should enter at once more deeply and more consciously into the consideration of your own feebleness. It was for this purpose God permitted you to fall, that, being warned inwardly by inspiration, by a clearer light than before, you might, knowing yourself well, learn to despise yourself, and to regard yourself as something vile and of no account, and to be willing that others should view you in the same light. Otherwise you will never attain to a