Here begins the Third Book. I. On the scourges of God. The subtlety of the divine wisdom, just as inwardly, like a witness, it searches out consciences, so outwardly it inflicts punishments; that the testimony of the prophet may be true, that He Himself is both witness and judge. Have mercy, O Lord, on wretched Isidore, who does what is unworthy and suffers what is deserved, sinning continually and daily enduring Thy scourges. Ordered is the mercy of God, which first here amends a man from sins through scourges, and afterward frees him from eternal punishment. For the elect of God is worn down by the sorrows of this life, that he may gain the more perfect things of the life to come.
By no means does God spare the offender, since He either strikes the sinner with a temporal scourge for cleansing, or leaves him to be punished by eternal judgment, or man himself punishes in himself by repenting what he wickedly committed. And for this reason it is that God does not spare the offender. To the righteous man temporal scourges profit toward eternal joys; therefore the righteous ought to rejoice in punishments, and the impious ought to fear amid prosperity. God withdraws neither from the righteous nor from the reprobate His mercy and His justice. For both He judges the good here through affliction, and there rewards them through mercy; and He rewards the wicked here through temporal clemency, and there punishes them through eternal justice.
For in this life God spares the impious and yet does not spare the elect; in that life He will spare the elect, yet will not spare the wicked. Dangerous is the security of the wicked in this life, and tranquil is the sorrow of the good. For the wicked man, after death, is led away to be tormented; but the righteous man, after his labor, sleeps secure. Not only concerning bodily sufferings, but also concerning spiritual ones, it must be understood, that the more each man endures scourges whether in body or in mind, the more he may hope to be rewarded at the end. Often, by God's hidden judgment, the reprobate are in this world beyond the correction of the scourge; and while they seem to have committed many damnable things, yet, despised by God, they are struck by no rod of amendment.
He who is loved by God is corrected the more by the scourge if he has sinned, as the prophet Amos says: You only have I known out of all the nations of the earth; therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities. For whom the Lord loves He corrects, and scourges every son whom He receives. It is exceedingly necessary that the righteous man in this life be both tempted by vices and beaten by the scourge, so that, while he is assailed by vices, he may not grow proud of his virtues, and while he is worn down by grief of mind or of flesh, he may be drawn back from the love of the world. But the righteous man ought to be tried, yet by the trial of the wound, not by the trial of luxury.
God deals more harshly with His elect in this life, so that, while they are struck by the stronger goads of the scourge, no delights of the present life may charm them, but they may unceasingly long for the heavenly homeland, where a sure rest is awaited. The elect are proved by the adversity of this life, so that, according to Peter, judgment may begin at the house of God, while in this life God chastises His elect with the scourge of judgment. II. On the twofold striking. Twofold is the divine striking: one for a good end, whereby we are struck in the flesh that we may be amended; the other whereby we are wounded in conscience out of love, that we may love God more ardently. In a twofold manner God looks either toward pardon or toward vengeance. Toward pardon, as with Peter;
toward vengeance, as when He testifies that He will go down and see the deeds of the Sodomites. In a threefold manner God strikes whom He wills: that is, the reprobate unto damnation, those elect whom He sees going astray unto purgation, and the righteous for the propagation of the glory of their merits. For in the first manner Egypt was struck unto damnation; in the second manner the poor Lazarus unto purgation; in the third manner Job was struck unto proving. A man is often scourged by God before sin, that he may not be evil, as Paul, who, at the instigation of an angel of Satan, endured the goads of the flesh. He is scourged also after sin, that he may be corrected, like that man in the apostle who was delivered to Satan unto the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved.
Yet even he who does not know why he is beaten does not justly murmur. For God often scourges the righteous man for this reason, that he may not fall by growing proud of his righteousness. In this life God strives so much the more to spare, the more He scourges by waiting; but some He corrects by striking, of whom He says: I rebuke and chastise those whom I love; others He punishes by striking, whom He beholds sinning incorrigibly, and whom He now strikes not as a father under discipline strikes his sons, but with strict damnation, as an adversary strikes his enemies. Of whom He says: I have struck you with the scourge of an enemy, with a cruel chastisement. And again: Why do you cry to me over your affliction? Your grief is incurable. Whence let each one hasten, and fear lest his life be struck together with his guilt.
For the scourge then washes away guilt, when it has changed the life. For in him whose ways it does not change, it does not expiate his actions. Every divine striking is either a cleansing of the present life or the beginning of the punishment that follows. For to some, scourges begin from this life and endure into the eternal striking. Whence through Moses the Lord says: A fire is kindled in my anger, and it shall burn even to hell beneath. It is commonly said by some: God does not judge twice for the same thing; who nevertheless do not attend to that which is written elsewhere: Jesus, freeing the people from the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
For although one guilt is not struck twice, yet one striking is understood, which, begun here, is completed there, so that in those who are in no way corrected, the striking of the preceding scourges is the beginning of the torments that follow. Hence it is that in the Psalm it is written: Let them be covered, as with a double cloak, with their own confusion. For the diploid is a double garment, with which those are figuratively clothed who are condemned both with temporal punishment and with eternal. Whence also Jeremiah: Affliction upon affliction, that is, a twofold damnation, both here and in the age to come. And the same in another place: And crush them with a double crushing, that is, a twofold punishment, namely the present and the future.
For some, by God's secret judgment, it is ill here, well there, namely so that while they are corrected by being chastised here, they may be freed from eternal damnation. But for some it is well here, ill there, as it befell that rich man who, conspicuous here for the splendor of his power, after death was delivered to be tormented in the fires of Gehenna. Further, for some it is ill both here and there, because, unwilling to be corrected, they both begin to be scourged in this life and are damned in the eternal striking. Some are plunged into so great a depth of despair that they cannot be amended even by scourges. Of whom the Lord rightly says through the prophet: In vain have I struck your children; they have not received discipline.
Often the righteous man laments and does not know whether he suffers the present scourges for all his sins, or for one only, and he does not know what that guilt is for which he has deserved to suffer such punishments, and because of that very uncertainty he is chiefly caught up in grief. Although the present scourges absolve the righteous man from his sins, yet he is still troubled by fear of vengeance, lest the blows that press upon him should not suffice to purge his faults. And so, while he suffers present things and dreads future ones, in a certain manner, as the prophet says, he receives double for his sins. III. On the infirmity of the flesh. There are some men of such a quality that they cannot be corrected unless they have seen others scourged;
and thus they make progress by comparison with the evil, while they fear that that may befall them in which they see others perish. Seeing that some are unwilling to be corrected by their own will, God touches them with the goads of adversities. Some also, foreseeing that they can sin much, He scourges unto salvation with an infirmity of the body, that they may not sin, so that it is more useful for them to be broken by weaknesses unto salvation than to remain unharmed unto damnation. The visitation of God is neither always taken for good, nor always for evil. For it is taken for good, as is that: Visit us in Thy salvation. But for evil, according to that: In the time of their visitation they shall perish.
From three causes do infirmities of the body occur: that is, from sin, from temptation, and from the passion of intemperance; but to this last alone can human medicine bring aid, while to those others only the mercy of divine compassion. For those who are stronger and healthy, it is useful for them to be sick and not to sin, lest, through the vigor of health, they be defiled by unlawful desires of covetousness and of luxury. The hardness that presses upon the mind, and is not felt, is usefully changed into the flesh, that it may be felt and, once understood, amended. For the wounds of the flesh are more quickly felt than those of the soul; therefore those who err are more quickly corrected through a scourge of the flesh.
This indeed the scales of unbelief on Paul's eyes indicate, which, when they were changed by rebuke in the eyes of the flesh, straightway the hardness of his mind was dissolved. There is a ruinous health which leads a man to disobedience. There is also a wholesome infirmity which, through divine correction, breaks the mind from hardness. The languor of the soul, that is, the infirmity of sins, is ruinous; of which also the apostle says: Who is weak, and I am not inflamed? For the same apostle approves that infirmity of the flesh is useful, saying: When I am weak, then am I stronger. IV. On the endurance of divine correction. The sinful man ought not to murmur under the scourges of God, because he is chiefly amended by this, that he is corrected.
But each one then bears more lightly what he suffers, if he has examined his own evils, for which a just retribution is inflicted upon him. Let him who suffers ill learn not to murmur, even if he does not know why he suffers evils; and through this let him judge that he suffers justly, in that he is judged by Him whose judgments are never unjust. He who endures scourges and murmurs against God accuses the justice of the Judge; but he who acknowledges that he suffers what he endures from a just Judge, even if he does not know why he suffers, through this is already justified, in that he both accuses himself and praises the justice of God.
When from prosperous circumstances the righteous man furnishes useful examples to men, it is necessary that he be again touched also by adversities, in order that his patience may be proved, so that once more those who recognized his temperance in prosperity may take from him proofs of fortitude. He who is tormented by the passions of the soul at the ambush of the adversary should not therefore believe that he who suffers such things is estranged from Christ; but rather let him esteem that through this he is commendable to God, if, while he suffers these things, he praises God rather than accuses Him. For great profit, by divine judgment, the mind of the righteous man is agitated by various trials of the passions.
For which, if he gives thanks to God and reckons that he is worthy of such things because of his own guilt, then what he endures from suffering will be reckoned to him in place of virtues, since he both acknowledges the divine justice and understands his own guilt. V. On the temptations of the devil. By many trials of calamities the mind of the righteous man is assailed in this life; whence he desires to be utterly torn from this world, that he may both be free from hardships and find there a fixed security. Between those punishments which the righteous man suffers in the body, and those which he endures in the mind through the deceit of the devil, there is a great difference. For he bears more grievously those he inwardly bewails than those he outwardly endures. For these he avoids both by place and by time; those he can avoid neither by place nor by time.
The devil does not tempt the elect more than the will of God permits. And by tempting, he serves the advancement of the saints. Even though unwilling, the devil nevertheless serves the benefit of the saints, when he does not deceive them by his temptations but rather instructs them. For the temptations which he stirs up unto human destruction, Christ sometimes turns, with wholesome benefit, unto the exercise of virtues. The snares and cunning of the devil, although they are spread out here and there, seeking whom they may devour, yet do not go forth from the divine power, so that they cannot harm as much as they maliciously strive to. For when could the virtue of the saints have endured so much, if the heavenly dispensation did not, by its pious governance, curb the wickedness of the demons?
And although the devil always desires to bring temptation upon the righteous, yet, if he has not received power from God, he can in no way attain what he craves. Whence every will of the devil is unjust, and yet, by God's permission, all his power is just. For of himself he unjustly craves to tempt whomsoever he will, but those who are to be tempted, and in the manner in which they are to be tempted, God justly permits to be tempted, and not otherwise. Whence also in the books of Kings it is written of the devil that an evil spirit of the Lord rushed upon Saul. Where it is justly asked: if of the Lord, why evil? if evil, why of the Lord? But in two words is comprehended both the just power of God and the unjust will of the devil.
For it is an evil spirit through its most wicked will, and the same is a spirit of the Lord through the most just power it has received. The devil is not the sender-in, but rather the kindler of vices. For he does not kindle the fuel of concupiscence anywhere except where he has first beheld the delights of a wicked thought; and if we spurn these from ourselves, without doubt he departs confounded, and straightway the darts of his concupiscence are broken, "and they lie despised and without light, those torches of his." The servant of God ought both to understand and to guard against the ambushes of the enemy alike; and so to remain simple in innocence of life, that yet it behooves him to be prudent along with simplicity.
He who does not mingle prudence with simplicity is, according to the prophet, a dove seduced, having no heart. But therefore a dove, because simple; therefore having no heart, because ignorant of prudence. Often the fraud of Satan is laid bare to the hearts of the saints, when, feigning himself under the appearance of a good angel of light, while he strives to deceive the elect, he is detected and despised. So too God makes His saints understand the words of deceitful teaching, so that they may inwardly recognize the diabolical error and carefully beware of it. The discernment of the saints ought to be so great that, endowed with reason, they may distinguish between good and evil, lest the devil deceive them through the appearance of good. For this is the inquiry of Joshua saying: Are you ours, or of our adversaries?
On account of this it is also said to Jeremiah: If you separate the precious from the vile, you shall be as my mouth. For then the saints judge rightly concerning themselves, when God makes them understand the deceitful enticements of the demons. Many are deceived by the devil and are ignorant that they have been deceived, as the testimony of the prophet Hosea declares: Strangers, he says, have devoured his strength, and he himself was ignorant of it. For by strangers the malign spirits are signified, who devour the virtues of the mind; but this the hearts of the negligent do not understand. As it were unarmed, the devil is conquered when he tries to deprave a man by open iniquity;
but he advances armed when, under the appearance of holiness and virtue, he destroys the things that are holy, when even he who is deceived does not perceive his own losses, but as though they were virtues, follows and loves the things which are vices. In the eyes of the carnal the devil is terrible; in the eyes of the elect his terror is worthless. By the unbelieving he is feared like a lion; by the strong in faith he is despised like a worm, and, shown for a moment, is repelled. He who does not receive the suggestions of the devil in no way passes over into his snares. For he is easily repelled in the ensuing deed, if his first enticements are rejected.
For the devil is a slippery serpent, whose head, that is, whose first suggestion, if it is not resisted, glides entirely into the inner parts of the heart while it is not felt. The beginnings of diabolical temptations are frail; but if they are not guarded against, but pass through use into habit, they grow strong at the last, so that they are conquered either never or with difficulty. Although in the whole of life the devil desires to make a man transgress, yet he strives all the more to deceive him at the end. Hence it is that in the beginning it was said to the serpent against the first-formed man: And you shall lie in wait for his heel, because assuredly the devil arranges to supplant at the last the man whom he does not deceive in the course of his past life.
Therefore, however righteous anyone may be, it is never necessary that he be secure in this life, but let him always beware in humility, and always, lest he fall at the end, let him be fearful and solicitous. The devil flatters his own followers, but against the servants of God he contrives contrary temptations, after the example of the Lord, who after His baptism suffered Himself to be tempted by the devil. The devil possesses all the saints not by holding them, but persecutes them by tempting. For because he does not reign within them, he fights against them from without. And he who has lost dominion within stirs up war without. Then the devil rages more fiercely against the one whom he possesses, when he knows that he is to be expelled from him by divine power.
Whence the unclean spirit then tore more grievously the boy in whom he dwelt, when he was compelled to go out from him at Christ's command. Which deed also looks to the words concerning Job, where at the last Behemoth draws his tail tight like a cedar. The devil presses more, with various temptations, against those who are able to profit others also by their usefulness, so that while they are hindered, those who are to be taught may not make progress. The malign spirits, without ceasing, tempt again to defile that which we desire to be cleansed within us. But the saints, with a foreseeing spirit, foreknow their ambushes, and whatever earthly thing they perceive in themselves they unceasingly drain away by holy works, so that they may be found pure from their inmost parts.
By the same allurement men are now deceived through the devil by which the first-formed were deceived in paradise. For with many deceptions of vices he swallows down the minds of the reprobate by assailing them. For now he deceives by promises; now he entices by transitory things as though they were necessary; now he even suggests that the very torments of hell are as it were light and transitory, in order that he may dissolve the hearts of the wretched into covetousness and wantonness, and lead them down with himself to Tartarus.
The devices of his machinations and the seeds of evil thoughts, which the devil pours into the hearts of men, so often entangle the mind, captured on every side, that from whatever side one tries to escape, he cannot go out without danger, just as if you were to swear to do a thing which, if you do it, you sin, and if you do not do it, you are guilty of perjury. In so great a peril of evil, therefore, that a way of escape may lie open, the lesser things are rather to be chosen, that the greater may be avoided. When the devil seeks to deceive anyone, he first observes the nature of each, and applies himself from that side from which he has perceived the man to be apt for sinning.
The devil tempts men from that side on which he sees them easily inclined to vices through an overflowing humor, so that, according to the mixture of the humor, he applies also the temptation. Read of Balaam, who, as a figure of the devil, perniciously advised setting snares against the people of God from that side from which he perceived them to be more easily about to fall. For he too who draws off water somewhere does not send it through another part except where he has directed its flow. Let no one deem that no fault which he endures from his own temperament; but as much as he is able, let him fight against that which he endures. For if one yields to the temperament, the temptation or the vice is in no way resisted.
For this reason the devil is called in the sacred writings Behemoth, that is, an animal, because he fell from the heavens down to the earth. For this reason he is called Leviathan, that is, a serpent from the waters, because he is tossed about in the sea of this world with rolling cunning. And he is named a bird for this reason, because through pride he is lifted up on high. And rightly is he called by these three names, because according to his desert he deserved the air as a bird for a prison; the earth, that he might be a brute animal; a serpent, that he might be tossed with insane fluctuation in the sea of this world. For from that which the devil works through his members, he obtains his names, so that whatever individuals do at his instigation, he himself is named from it. For whom does the devil not deceive? Whence he is an animal, that is, he tempts through the luxury of the flesh.
Whence he is a serpent, that is, the malice of covetousness and of doing harm. But whomever he does not deceive even thus, he lies in wait for. Whence he is a bird, that is, the ruin of pride. For on every side he prepares his wiles, until he finds a way by which he may deceive the unwary. It is one thing for the devil to enter into someone's mind, another to dwell there. For he enters even into the hearts of the saints while he insinuates evil suggestions; but he does not dwell in them, because he does not carry them over into his own body. But those who are in his body, these he inhabits, because they themselves are his temple. And if the devil creeps into the minds of the elect, yet he does not rest in them as in the hearts of the reprobate; for by the warmth of faith he is soon roused to go out from the elect.
Some, whom the devil had already devoured with greedy mouth, are again, by the hidden compassion of the divine judgment, snatched from his mouth and restored to salvation. For often many whom the ancient enemy has held sunk in the whirlpool of luxury, the divine power has, through repentance, drawn from his jaws. How does the prophet call the destruction of the good the choice food of the devil, when elsewhere it is written of him: He shall eat hay like an ox, except that in the eyes of God they are hay who, according to men, seem to be his choice food? And through this, those who perish from the number of the good, are, among men, the elect, but before God are hay. The devil is said to have already swallowed him whom he is seen already to have devoured by a completed crime.
But him whom he has not swallowed by the completion of a deed, but bites with the enticements of temptations that he may devour him, he still, as it were, chews in his jaw. Whence Paul too has the goads of the flesh by which he is humbled; he does not have the completion of sinning by which he might be swallowed. The mouth of the devil is his words. But his words are his hidden inspirations, by which, addressing the hearts of men, he burns them with hidden covetousness. Some, on account of their incorrigible iniquity, because they are not corrected of their own accord, are handed over to be vexed by unclean spirits, so that the demons may have power to seize them bodily, and, afflicted by their terrors, they may be humbled, may repent, and be saved, as the apostle also says, writing to the Corinthians:
To deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved. For it is useful that some who sin be bodily assigned to Satan, in order that they may be saved in soul, so that from the present correction they may fear the future judgment, and thereafter beware of offending. But some are assigned to the power of the demons for amendment; some, however, being despised, are delivered over to destruction alone. Never is the devil at leisure against a righteous man. For either he heaps up for him tribulations of the heart, or he stirs up sorrows of the body. Hence it is that the apostle says: There was given to me a goad of the flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me.
Often the force of the demons torments the mind of the righteous man with various pains of vexations, whence at times he is straitened even unto the anguish of despair. But for the soul that remains in the love of God, even such anguish itself profits toward merit. For whether in mind or in body, through the instigation of the unclean spirits, the righteous man suffers any adversity whatsoever, he certainly suffers it by God's permission. And if he humbly refers this very thing to the glory of God, and says what Job said for the suffering of the body: If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why should we not receive evil things? — this man is not separated from God, but joined to Him, however grievous the anguish by which he is tortured.
The righteous man suffers many adversities in the soul at the instigation of the demons, but by such trials he cannot perish from eternal life, because the merciful Lord does not reckon unto the damnation of guilt that which he who suffers bears unwillingly, by the permission of His majesty. For we sin there, where we turn aside by covetousness or by will; but where we are violently constrained, even if it is not a crime or a disgrace, yet the misery stands in place of disgrace and crime. But he who praises God for the misery inflicted, without doubt is free from the crimes committed. VI. On the temptations of dreams.
For the most part demons, meeting men at night, throw the human senses into confusion through visions, so as to make people fearful and timid; and often, in the despair of their sins, they trouble the mind of the converted through sleep, threatening the dread torments of hell. Sometimes, however, assailing human bodies even by open attack, they beat them; yet this happens by God's permission, for the punishment of the wicked and for the glory of endurance in the righteous. For the most part the unclean spirits delude, as they sleep, those whom they observe to lie sunk in the love of the world, deceiving them with a certain empty prosperity of hope. But certain others, whom they perceive to dread some adversity, they shake while sleeping with an empty terror.
And thus, assailing the hearts of the wretched with various delusions, now they soothe them with empty prosperity, now they terrify them with vain dread. Those who are conscious of no faults, or of but few, either never or rarely are wearied by nocturnal terrors; but resting in tranquil sleep, they sometimes even behold and see through their slumber certain hidden and mystical things. But those who have defiled their hearts with graver vices, deluded by the terror of conscience, gaze upon fearful sights. For a deceiving image mocks the minds of the wretched with diverse images, and those whom it has dragged into vices while waking, it wearies while sleeping, so that it never allows them to rest secure.