glorying only in his infirmities; and that the greatness of the revelations which God made to him, should not lead him to presumption, as he himself says.
God, then, moved by compassion for our misery and perverse inclinations, permits these temptations to come upon us, and sometimes to be very horrible, and to come under different forms, that we may humble ourselves and know ourselves, though they seem to us to be useless. It is in this way He manifests His Goodness and Wisdom in making things which seem to us most hurtful to be most helpful, in that through them we become more humble—which is the thing above all others our souls need. For it generally happens that the servant of God, who is thus tried by thoughts such as these, by indevotion and dryness of spirit, concludes that they arise from his own imperfections, and that there cannot be another soul so imperfect and so lukewarm as his own; and he believes that such thoughts come only to those who are forsaken by God, and that he himself, therefore, deserves to be forsaken by Him. It follows, then, that he, who once thought himself to be something, is now brought, by this bitter medicine, sent him from God, to regard himself as the most depraved person in the world, and as one unworthy to be called a Christian; and he never would have
