RULES
FOR THE SAME EFFECT WITH
GREATER DISCERNMENT OF SPIRITS
AND THEY HELP MORE FOR THE SECOND WEEK
First Rule. The first: It is proper to God and to His Angels in their
movements to give true spiritual gladness and joy, taking away all sadness and
disturbance which the enemy brings on. Of this latter it is proper to fight against
the spiritual gladness and consolation, bringing apparent reasons, subtleties and
continual fallacies.
Second Rule. The second: It belongs to God our Lord to give consolation to
the soul without preceding cause, for it is the property of the Creator to enter, go
out and cause movements in the soul, bringing it all into love of His Divine Majesty.
I say without cause: without any previous sense or knowledge of any object through
which such consolation would come, through one’s acts of understanding and will.
Third Rule. The third: With cause, as well the good Angel as the bad can
console the soul, for contrary ends: the good Angel for the profit of the soul, that it
may grow and rise from good to better, and the evil Angel, for the contrary, and
later on to draw it to his damnable intention and wickedness.
Fourth Rule. The fourth: It is proper to the evil Angel, who forms himself
under the appearance of an angel of light, to enter with the devout soul and go out
with himself: that is to say, to bring good and holy thoughts, conformable to such
just soul, and then little by little he aims at coming out drawing the soul to his
covert deceits and perverse intentions.
Fifth Rule. The fifth: We ought to note well the course of the thoughts, and
if the beginning, middle and end is all good, inclined to all good, it is a sign of the
good Angel; but if in the course of the thoughts which he brings it ends in something
bad, of a distracting tendency, or less good than what the soul had previously
proposed to do, or if it weakens it or disquiets or disturbs the soul, taking away its
peace, tranquillity and quiet, which it had before, it is a clear sign that it proceeds
from the evil spirit, enemy of our profit and eternal salvation.
Sixth Rule. The sixth: When the enemy of human nature has been perceived
and known by his serpent’s tail and the bad end to which he leads on, it helps the
person who was tempted by him, to look immediately at the course of the good
thoughts which he brought him at their beginning, and how little by little he aimed
at making him descend from the spiritual sweetness and joy in which he was, so far
as to bring him to his depraved intention; in order that with this experience, known
and noted, the person may be able to guard for the future against his usual deceits.
Seventh Rule. The seventh: In those who go on from good to better, the good
Angel touches such soul sweetly, lightly and gently, like a drop of water which
enters into a sponge; and the evil touches it sharply and with noise and disquiet, as
when the drop of water falls on the stone.
And the above-said spirits touch in a contrary way those who go on from bad
to worse.
The reason of this is that the disposition of the soul is contrary or like to the
said Angels. Because, when it is contrary, they enter perceptibly with clatter and
noise; and when it is like, they enter with silence as into their own home, through
the open door.
Eighth Rule. The eighth: When the consolation is without cause, although
there be no deceit in it, as being of God our Lord alone, as was said; still the
spiritual person to whom God gives such consolation, ought, with much vigilance
and attention, to look at and distinguish the time itself of such actual consolation
from the following, in which the soul remains warm and favored with the favor and
remnants of the consolation past; for often in this second time, through one’s own
course of habits and the consequences of the concepts and judgments, or through
the good spirit or through the bad, he forms various resolutions and opinions which
are not given immediately by God our Lord, and therefore they have need to be very
well examined before entire credit is given them, or they are put into effect.