Pyrobolia, seu de ignitis Sathanae telis, commonefactio theologica

XIII. Form.

But so that those things which contribute to declaring the form may be understood, we shall briefly declare the circumstances of these contests, in which there is the greatest danger from the fiery darts flying about.

1. Place. As often as Satan attacks us immediately, there is danger from Solitude: but when he fights mediately, the danger is also from the frequency of men, whose temperaments toward us are poikila varied/divers. These testimonies of the holy Scripture teach this.

Woe to that one: because when he falls, there will not be a second to lift him up. Eccl. 4:10.

My soul is among lions, I lie among the burning: among the sons of men, whose teeth are as spears and arrows, and their tongue as a sharp sword. Psalm 57:5.

Sometimes the vicissitudes of things which the Saints experience, poikilos zographosi tas philas variously color friendships, if I may use the voice of Plato: and faith both stands and falls with fortune. Sometimes, without faith being changed, friends lack the counsel and power to help those who are struck with blows and stabs. And so, even then, they have cause to repeat that of Aristotle: o philoi, oudeis philos. O friends, there is no friend.

2. Time. Although the militia of the Saints is sometimes interpolated by truces; nevertheless, during these, there is the greatest danger from Satan and his satellites: which, just as it grows heavier when a man is about to die, so it finally vanishes then. For death, as from sin, so also from the snares of Satan, frees a man through the grace of God. Rom. 6:7.

Let us therefore have this persuaded, that the time of akrobolismou skirmishing falls into the time of our recruits' training, in which we recruits of Jesus Christ swear to the words of the Sacrament: that the most bitter fight, which lasts through all our life, is sometimes interrupted by brief and dangerous truces: it is well, however, that the retreat is sounded then, when the end of the animal life falls into the most joyful beginning of the spiritual and perennial life.

XIIII.

Fiery Darts are twisted against us from the right and