{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/101/1010189.htm","path":"chr/ecf/101/1010189.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/101/1010189.htm","text":"Chapter XXXII.\u2014Of the Charms of Perfumes Which are More Easily Overcome.\n48. With the attractions of odours I am not much troubled. When absent I do not seek them; when present I do not refuse them; and am prepared ever to be without them. At any rate thus I appear to myself; perchance I am deceived. For that also is a lamentable darkness wherein my capacity that is in me is concealed, so that my mind, making inquiry into herself concerning her own powers, ventures not readily to credit herself; because that which is already in it is, for the most part, concealed, unless experience reveal it. And no man ought to feel secure 923 in this life, the whole of which is called a temptation, 924 that he, who could be made better from worse, may not also from better be made worse. Our sole hope, our sole confidence, our sole assured promise, is Thy mercy.\n\u201cFor some,\u201d says Thomas Taylor (Works, vol. I. \u201cChrist\u2019s Temptation,\u201d p. 11), \u201cthrough vain prefidence of God\u2019s protection, run in times of contagion into infected houses, which upon just calling a man may: but for one to run out of his calling in the way of an ordinary visitation, he shall find that God\u2019s angels have commission to protect him no longer than he is in his way (Ps. 91.11), and that being out of it, this arrow of the Lord shall sooner hit him than another that is not half so confident.\u201d We should not, as Fuller quaintly says, \u201chollo in the ears of a sleeping temptation;\u201d and when we are tempted, let us remember that if (Hibbert, Syntagma Theologicum, p. 342) \u201ca giant knock while the door is shut, he may with ease be still kept out; but if once open, that he gets in but a limb of himself, then there is no course left to keep out the remaining bulk.\u201d See also Augustin on Peter\u2019s case, De Corrept. et Grat. c. 9.\n156:924\nJob 7.1, Old Vers. See p. 153, note 1.","title":"Nicene and Post Nicene-Fathers, Vol. I: The Confessions: ...","type":"page"}