View Volume II - In Today's Catholic World

346 THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,
body is of no harm, even though we perceive that it is something
unlawful; for the will, as he said, being then given to God,
whatever happens in the flesh is to be attributed to the violence
of the devil and of passion ; so that, in that case, we should only
make a negative resistance, and permit our nature to be disturbed,
and the devil to operate. Here is his seventeenth :
proposition
"
Tradito Deo libero arbitrio, non est amplius habenda ratio ten-
tationum, nee eis alia resistentia fieri debet nisi negativa, nulla
adhibita industria ; et si natura commovetur, oportet
sinere ut
commoveatur, quia est natura." And in the forty-seventh propo
"
sition, also, he : says Cum hujusmodi violentia) occurrunt,
sinere oportet, ut Satanas operetur etiamsi sequantur pol-
et non opus est haec confiteri."
lutiones, et pejora
10. Thus this deceiver led people astray, though our Lord
tells us, through
St. James :
"
Resist the devil, and he will fly
from you" (James, iv, 7). It is not sufficient, then, to take no
active part, negative se habere, we are not to allow the devil to
operate in us, and our concupiscence to be gratified, for God
commands us to resist him with all our strength. Nothing can
be more false than what he says in his forty-first proposition :
"Deus permittit, et vult ad nos humiliandos quod Da3mon
violentiam inferat corporibus, et actus carnales committere faciat
&c. Nay, it is most false, for St. Paul teaches us that God
"
will not allow us to be tempted above our :
strength God is
faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which
you are able ;
be able to bear it"
may
but will make also with temptation issue, that you
(I. Cor. x, 13). The meaning of the
Apostle is this : that God will not fail to give
us sufficient assist
ance in time of temptation to resist with our will, and by this
resistance our temptations will be advantageous to us. He allows
the devil to tempt us to sin ;
him to force us :
"
permit
potest." And St. Augustin(4) says
"
but, as St. Jerom says, he will not
Persuadere potest, praicipitare non
that he is like a chained
dog, who can bark at us, but not bite us, unless we put ourselves
in his power. No matter how violent the temptation may be, if
we call on God we will never fail :
trouble I will deliver you" (Psalm xlix, 15) ;
(4) St. August. /. 5, de Civ. c. 20.
"
Call on me in the day of
"
Praising I will