Pyrobolia, seu de ignitis Sathanae telis, commonefactio theologica

VIII. The Domestic Traitor.

But let us see again and again, lest our Flesh, colluding and conspiring with the enemy, open a window to his fiery darts. For it too is an enemy, palinbolos a turncoat/fickle, veteran and inconstant. According to that:

But I say this, walk in the Spirit, and do not fulfill what the Flesh desires. For the Flesh desires against the Spirit. Gal. 5:16-17.

How great the cowardice of the Flesh is, can be gathered from the fact that it delights to cherish the Serpent Satan in its bosom: that it reveals its own nakedness and infirmity to him: that just as it does not fear the deadly poison infused into the wound by Satan, so it causes the man to fear and tremble at the medicinal hand of Christ: because the Flesh shuns its own mortification.

When, therefore, by the indication of this traitor, Satan knows not obscurely how great the darkness of mind and ignorance of divine things is in a man: what aversion of the will from the good: what intemperance and ataxia disorder of the affections: it is easy for him to attack the man in that very part in which he especially labors. He attacks, however, either by tickling that which is evil and harmful in a man, so that he may foster and amplify it: or by harshly attacking that which is good, so that, if possible, he may pluck it out by the roots and abolish it: or by showing a phainomenon apparent and painted good, so that he may obscure the truly and actually good: or by lying, both that those good things are entirely taken from us, which we remember were given to us divinely: and that those evils are absent, which nevertheless surround us and press upon us most heavily: or by calling into doubt divine Mandates, Promises, Comminations, and Consolations.