, but in a perilous merry
mortal temptation. So that if we should, beside our matter that we
have in hand, enter into that too, we might make a longer work
between both than we could well finish this day. Howbeit, to be
short, it is soon seen that in such a case the sum and effect of
the counsel must (in a manner) rest in giving him warning of the
devil's sleights. And that must be done under such a sweet
pleasant manner that the man should not abhor to hear it. For
while it could not lightly be otherwise that the man were rocked
and sung asleep by the devil's craft, and his mind occupied as it
were in a delectable dream, he should never have good audience of
him who would rudely and boisterously shog him and wake him, and
so shake him out of it. Therefore must you fair and easily touch
him, and with some pleasant speech awake him, so that he wax not
wayward, as children do who are waked ere they wish to rise.

But when a man hath first begun with his praise (for if he be
proud you shall much better please him with a commendation than
with a dirge) then, after favour won therewith, a man may little
by little insinuate the doubt of such revelations--not at first as
though it were for any doubt of his, but of some other man's, that
men in some other places talk of. And peradventure it shall not
miscontent him to say that great perils may fall therein, in
another man's case than his own, and he shall begin to preach upon
it. Or, if you were a man that had not so very great scrupulous
conscience of a harmless lie devised to do good with (the kind
which St. Austine, though he take it always for sin, yet he taketh
but for venial; and St. Jerome, as by divers places in his books
appeareth, taketh not fully for that much), then may you feign
some secret friend of yours to be in such a state. And you may say
that you yourself somewhat fear his peril, and have made of
charity this voyage for his sake, to ask this good father's counsel.

And in the communication, upon these words of St. John, "Give not
credence to every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they be
of God," and these words of St. Paul, "The angel of Satan
transfigureth himself into the angel of light," you shall take
occasion (the better if they hap to come in on his side), but yet
not lack occasion neither if those texts, for lack of his offer,
come in upon your own--occasion, I say, you shall not lack to
enquire by what sure and undeceivable tokens a man may