Three Books on the Death of Christ and Self-Reflection, and Two Books on the Study of Divine and Human Philosophy

and it is confirmed likewise and clearly deduced that our imaginative faculty needs a habit inclining it toward knowing Christ. For we are in need of this, first of all, so that we may be rendered diligent and apt for just operations. For that which is in potentia potentiality by its own nature can be drawn to many things for diverse affections and in a certain way converted. For if it is inclined toward one of the objects by only one operation, it can nonetheless be led very easily to another. Therefore, it needs a certain natural stabilization to operate rightly, so that by doing the same thing more often—that is, from frequent actus actualities/acts (as Aristotle says)—it might beget a habitus habit. Again, unless that potency or force, indeterminate of itself, through this habit turns more willingly toward one of the contraries, it will always be necessary to carry out a certain perscrutatio searching/scrutiny before a chosen act is performed. Now, for operations to be completed with delight, habit is necessary. Indeed, it renders the one in whom it is strengthened—as if it were a connatural effect—like the works of nature, which are not finished without admixed delight. Hence, it is manifest to us that our actions are rendered inept and disordered unless they are performed with a congruent delight of the soul, which we must lack if we lack the habit. Whence Aristotle teaches that the sign of it is that delight which we feel in the work, although this is mention of free actions, not of those which are born innate and flow of their own accord from an animal. But we, whose mind’s affections we see being rotated and torn apart in different directions, must strengthen the mind by every means with a strong and constant imagination of the passion of Christ. Lest either images of obscene things encroach upon us—and having made an attack, as if having broken through embankments, they inundate and fill the soul with evil affections—or, creeping into the sense and the friends of the soul, and showing themselves to be doing something else, they mock the mind. And by doing this repeatedly, they slide into the receptacle of sensible species so familiarly that they expel the image of Christ, not thought of often and therefore not strengthened by habit.

The snares
of the ancient enemy

For the ancient enemy uses a thousand acts of harming; he always devises a thousand snares and prestige to deceive. At one time he sets traps with good works and tempts at established times; at another, he attacks us with great force so that we turn our backs in terror. Hence