Volume II, Treatise IV, Chapter III

Why God Is Pleased at Our Being Tempted, and the Advantages Thereof

“Tue Lord your God tempts you, that it may be known, whether or not you love him with all your heart, and with all your soul.” (Deuteronomy 13:3) Upon these words of Deuteronomy, St. Austin asks, how what is said here by the Holy Ghost, can be reconciled with the words of St. James, who says, that “God tempts no man.”—(Jam. i. 13.) And answering his own objection, he says, that there are two ways of tempting; the one tends to deceive souls and make them fall into sin. Now it is not God makes use of this, but it is the devil, whose business it is to tempt after this manner, according to those words of the apostle, “lest he who tempts, should have tempted you” (1 Thessalonians 3:5), that is to say, as it is interpreted, lest the devil should have tempted you. The other way of tempting goes no farther than to try our hearts; and in this sense it is, that scripture says here, that God tempts us; and in another place, that “God tempted Abraham.” (Genesis 22:1) God is pleased to try us, to make us sensible of our own strength, and to show how we love and fear him; and therefore, as soon as Abraham had lifted up his hand to sacrifice his son, “I know now,” said our Lord to him, “that thou fearest God (Genesis 22:12), that is, as St. Austin expresses it, “I have made thee know” that thou lovest him; so that there are two sorts of temptations, the one which God himself sends us, and the other, which happens to us by his permission; and which proceed from our enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

But what is the reason that God permits us to be tempted by the last sort of temptation? St. Gregory, Cassian, and several other great men, treating of this question, says, first, that it is for our advantage to be tempted, and that God, sometimes to try us, withdraws his hand from us for a little while; and if it were not go, neither he nor the prophet would have said, ‘‘O, do not utterly forsake me!” (Psalms 118:8) But knowing well that God uses sometimes to forsake his servants, and to withdraw his hand from them for a little space, and for their greater good; thence it is, that he asks not of God, that he would never forsake him, but only that he would not forsake him for ever. After the same manner he addresses himself to God in the twenty-seventh Psalm: “Withdraw not thyself from thy servant in thy anger.” (Psalms 26:9) He asks not, that God would never withdraw himself from him, but that he would not do it in his anger; that is, so that he might thereby fall into sin. For with respect to that withdrawing, which goes no further than to try us; and as to those temptations which God himself sends us, these are what the prophet asks for, when he says: “Prove me, O Lord, and try me.” (Psalms 25:2) And God himself says in Isaias, “for a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In the moment of my wrath I hid my face a little from thee, but with everlasting kindness have I had pity on thee.”—(Isa. liv. 7, 8.)

But let us take a more particular view of the advantages we reap from temptations. Cassian says, that God deals with us as he dealt with the children of Israel, when he brought them into the land of promise; he would not destroy their enemies wholly, but left there the Canaanites, the Amorites, and several others, “in order,” says the scripture, “that Israel might gain experience by them, and that her children might learn to fight with the enemy, and be accustomed to war.”—(Judg. iii. 1, 2.) Thus it is, says he, that God is pleased we should have enemies, and that we should be exposed to the assaults of temptations; that being continually engaged, we might not by softness and prosperity ruin ourselves. For it has often happened, that they whom the enemy has not been able to overcome by an open war, have been aftarwards easily vanquished, whilst they were seduced by the deceitful appearance of peace.

St. Gregory says, that God by a secret and adorable providénce, is pleased that the elect should be tempted and afilicted here; because this world is only a place of pilgrimage, or rather of banishment; where we must be continually travelling, till we arrive at our heavenly country. And whereas travellers, on meeting with some agreeable meadow or grove, turn sometimes off the high road, God, who would not have any thing put us out of ours, nor have us fix our minds upon earth, or take the place of our exile for that of our country, permits this life to be full of pain and torment; that the consideration of what we here suffer in it, may make us more ardently sigh after the life to come. St. Austin delivers the same sentiment, saying, that temptations and afflictions serve to shew us the misery of this life, and “to make us desire with greater ardour, and seek more carefully the other;” where we are to enjoy true happiness for all eternity. In another place, he says, that “afflictions hinder the traveller who is going to his own country, from looking upon his inn as the place of his abode, and from staying there too long.” When we intend to wean a child, and use it to more solid diet, we rub the nurse’s nipples with something bitter, which may make the child have an aversion to them. God deals with us almost after the same manner—He diffuses a bitterness over all the things of this world that we may have an aversion to them, and that seeing nothing here worth our longing for, we should desire nothing but himself. And this it is, which made St. Gregory say, that the “afflictions which oppress us here below, force us to have recourse to God, and make us have an inclination for nothing but him.”—(Lib. xxiii. Moral. ¢, 15.)

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