tan can induce the will to give consent, the deed
is done, the evil has entered, and, in proportion to the seriousness of
the matter, the divine love is quenched, and the power of the devil
quickened and strengthened.

A distinction, too, must be made between {124} deliberate and
indeliberate consent. St. Francis de Sales refers to what he calls
inclinations to sin,[16] when the mind, not being thoroughly aroused,
may amuse itself for some time with a thought or imagination, without
reflecting that it is a temptation to sin.

Father Augustine Baker says likewise, "The simple passing of such
thoughts or imaginations in the mind is no sin at all, though they
should rest there never so long without advertence, but only the giving
of deliberate consent to them"; and to constitute this deliberate
consent he requires that the mind must be "fully awake,"--that is, to
the fact that these were of the nature of sin,--"and had reflected on
them."[17]

Our only hope lies in a stubborn refusal of consent. Our safety lies
in fixing the will on this one thing. Never mind how fiercely the
enemy may assault. He may deliver charge after charge with a rapidity
that bewilders the soul, and makes it grow sick and dizzy. We may seem
to be beaten down under his feet, and all the storms and billows of a
fierce and terrible temptation may sweep over us, and yet so long as
from the {125} midst of the confusion we cry, "I will it not," the soul
is safe.[18]

The refusal of consent should be instant upon the first consciousness
of temptation. It is of great peril to dally even for a moment with
the sinful suggestion. Not only does it encourage the tempter on the
one hand, and weaken our powers of resistance on the other, but
deliberate dallying with evil is a sin in itself. It means that an
outpost has been surrendered, and even though in the end we reject the
main suggestion, yet we have by no means come off unscathed. We are
less capable of resisting the next attack than we were before; for "the
imagination of sin, the {126} dallying with it, the indulgence of the
senses, short of what the soul must own to itself to be a grave fall,
steeps and drags the soul more thoroughly in sin, immerses it in a
thicker and more blinding mist, interpenetrates more the whole moral
texture of the soul with evil, than, at an earlier stage, does the
actual sin itself."[19]

It is not always, however, with confusion and noise of battle that
Satan s