ood or evil, Hitton gives the following rule:

"If ye see an unusual light or brilliance with your bodily eye, or in
imagination, or if ye hear any wonderful supernatural sound with your
ears, or if ye perceive a sudden sweet taste in your mouths or feel any
warmth in your breasts, like fire, or any form of pleasure in any part of
your body, or if ye see a spirit in a bodily form, as if he were an angel
to fortify or instruct you, or if any such feeling that you know comes not
from you or from a physical creature, then observe yourselves with great
care at such a time and consider the emotions of your heart prudently. For
if ye become aware by occasion of pleasure or satisfaction derived from
such perception, that your hearts are drawn away from the contemplation of
Jesus Christ and from spiritual exercises: as from prayer, and knowledge
of yourselves and your failings, and from the turning in towards virtue
and spiritual knowledge and perception of God, with result that your heart
and your inclinations, your desire and your repose depend chiefly on the
above mentioned feeling or sight, in that ye therefore retain them, as if
that were a part of the celestial joy or angelic bliss, and therefore your
thoughts become such that ye neither pray nor can think of anything else,
but must entirely give way to that, in order to keep it and satisfy
yourself with it, then this sensation is very much to be suspected of
coming from the Enemy; and therefore were it ever so wonderful and
striking, still renounce it and do not consent to accept it. For this is a
snare of the Enemy, to lead the soul astray by such bodily sensation or
agreeableness of the senses, and to trap it in order to hurl it into
spiritual arrogance and false security, which happens if it flatters
itself as if it enjoyed celestial bliss and on account of the pleasure it
feels were already half in paradise, while it is still in fact at the gate
of hell, and therefore through pride and presumptuousness may have fallen
into error, heresy, fanaticism and other bodily or spiritual disaster.

"In case, however, that these things do not result in leading away your
heart from spiritual exercises, but cause ye to become ever more devout
and more ardent in prayer and more wise to cultivate spiritual thoughts;
if ye are at first astonished but nevertheless your heart turns back and
is awakened to greater longing for virtue and your love toward God and
your neighbor increases m