We must guard against deceptively subtle evils
3 min • Digitized on September 11, 2025
From The Spiritual Combat, in file "The Spiritual Combat (Dornin edition)", page 28
By Dom Lorenzo Scupoli
CHAPTER VIII.
Of the obstacle which prevents our forming a right judgment of things; How we may be assisted in it.
The difficulty of forming a right judgment of such things as we have just now mentioned, and many others, arises from a hasty notion of love and hatred we are apt to conceive of them at their first appearance; and our reason being prejudiced by such blind passions, everything appears in a far different light from that in which it ought to be considered. Whoever, therefore, desires to secure himself from so dangerous and common an illusion, must carefully preserve his heart free from all inordinate affections.
When an object presents itself, let the understanding with mature deliberation weigh its merits, before the will be suffered to embrace it if agreeable, or reject it if otherwise.
For, whilst the understanding remains unbiassed by the passions, it will easily distinguish between truth and falsehood, between real evil under the appearance of good, and real good under the false appearance of evil.—Whereas, no sooner is the will moved by the object either to love or hatred, but the understanding becomes incapable of forming a just notion of it; because the affection, by disguising it, imprints a false idea, and then being presented again to the will, the faculty already prepossessed, redoubles its love or hatred, exceeds all bounds, and is utterly deaf to the voice of reason.
In such monstrous confusion, the understanding plunges deeper and deeper into error, and represents the object to the will with heightened colours of good or evil.
Thus, whenever the rule I before laid down, and which on this occasion is of the greatest importance, happens ta be neglected, two most noble faculties of the soul are bewildered in a maze of error, darkness and confusion. Happy are those, who, void of all attachment to creatures, endeavour to discern the true nature of things, before they suffer their affections to be engaged; who frame their judgment by the dictates of reason, but especially by those supernatural lights the Holy Ghost is pleased to communicate either immediately from himself, or by those he has appointed for our guides.
But remember that this advice ought oftentimes more exactly to be followed. in those things which of themselves are commendable, than in those which are not entirely so, because of the greater danger of being deceived, and the prejudice and eagerness they generally occasion. Let nothing therefore be done rashly, since a single circumstance of time or place, not observed, may spoil all, and great fault be committed in the very manner and order of the performance; as is the case of many who have wrought their own perdition in the practice of the most sanctified exercises.