How to tell if we trust God or ourselves
2 min • Digitized on September 5, 2025
#Doctrine #Morals #Spiritual Directors
From The Spiritual Combat, in file "The Spiritual Combat (Dornin edition)", page 21
By Dom Lorenzo Scupoli
CHAPTER IV.
How to discover whether we truly diffide in ourselves and place our confidence in God.
The presumptuous man is persuaded he has acquired a diffidence of himself and a confidence in God; but this mistake is never more plainly discovered than when some fault is committed; for, if he gives way to vexation and despair of advancing in the way of virtue, it is evident he placed his confidence in himself, not in God; and the greater the anxiety and despondence, the greater certainty of his guilt.
For he who much diffides in himself, and places great confidence in God, should he commit a fault, he is not at all surprised, he does not abandon himself to a perplexing vexation; he justly attributes what has happened to his own weakness, and a want of due confidence in God.—Hence he learns to diffide still more in himself, and places all his hopes in the assistance of the Almighty. He detests beyond all things the sin he has fallen into; he condemns that passion or criminal habit which occasioned his fall: he conceives a lively sorrow for having offended his God: but his sorrow, ever attended with-peace of mind, does not interrupt the method he has laid down, or prevent his pursuing his enemies to their final destruction.
I sincerely wish, that what has been here advanced were attentively considered by many who think themselves very devout, yet from the moment the commit a fault will not be pacified, but hurry away to their director, more to rid themselves of the vexation arising from self-love, than out of any other motive; though their principal care should be to wash away the guilt of sin in the sacrament of penance, and fortify themselves with that of the Eucharist against a relapse.