Bishop Andrewes says: "When as Christ was but newly come out of the water of Baptism, and immediately after the heavens had opened unto Him, and the Holy Ghost descended upon Him in the likeness of a dove, and while He was yet full of the Holy Ghost, did the devil set upon Him";[[22]] and saintly old Leighton warns us: "Thou shalt be sure to be assaulted when thou hast received the greatest enlargements from heaven, either at the Sacrament or in prayer, or in any other way; then look for an onset. This arch-pirate lets the empty ships pass, but lays wait for them when they return richest laden."[[23]]
Thus the soul that has received special blessings of God must expect special attack, not only because it is natural for Satan to seek promptly to offset and quench the divine grace, but because when God gives us special spiritual strength He gives it in order that it may be used, and He Himself will supply the opportunity by permitting Satan to make his attack. "It is God's property to look for much at his hands to whom He hath given much. When He gives a man a large measure of grace, He gives the devil withal a larger patent."[[24]]
The like experience has ever been suffered by the Saints. We read of their struggles with temptation, and of the methods the adversary employs against them, and they sound often impossible and grotesque. We are inclined to dismiss them as the product of the childish imagination of some mediæval chronicler; but how do we know the method of the devil with the Saints? He never has occasion to deal with us in any unusual way. He is able to overthrow us daily with the most ordinary and commonplace temptations; how then dare we say how he might approach those against whom no common temptation can avail?
Thus are we taught not to look forward to growth in holiness as a means of escape from temptation. Such expectation would in itself be sin, because we should then be seeking God's gifts for our own selfish ease and indulgence, and not for His honour. If He should vouchsafe us the grace to attain to great achievement in the spiritual life, it would be a base return for His goodness to shut those graces up in our hearts (were such a thing possible), instead of using them in more extended endeavour for the glory of His Kingdom; instead of arming ourselves by their means for more complete and crushing conquests of His enemies.
The Saints are led along the path of sanctity that they may be more effective soldiers; not that they may by such progress escape from the presence of the foe, and find a pusillanimous peace in this life, while all the powers of evil are storming at the gates of the Kingdom, and making captives of the King's children.
Peace is to be had indeed, and in this life, "for the Kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,"[[25]] but, says à Kempis, "he that knows how to suffer will possess the greatest peace." Endurance of hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ is the only passport to honourable peace in this life, the only pledge of the "peace of God which passeth all understanding"[[26]] in the life to come.
IV. Satan in the Sanctuary
Thomas à Kempis tells us again, "There is no order so holy nor place so secret where there be not temptations."[[27]]
It would seem that the energies of Satan against God would, from the nature of things, find themselves paralysed under certain conditions. Surely, one should think, the devil could introduce his temptations more readily in a brothel than in a church, in ordinary secular employment rather than when we are engaged in the service of the sanctuary.
Such, however, is not the case. Amid the common employments of the carpenter shop in Nazareth we should scarcely have wondered had He been tempted; but that the enemy should have approached the Incarnate Son of God while in the midst of His great retreat in preparation for His ministry does fill us with astonishment. Or if it seem not unnatural that He should have been tempted in the desert solitudes, yet we do marvel at the audacity that led the tempter to bear Him to the holy precincts of the temple, and seize upon the circumstances there to tempt Him to seek other than His Father's will. But so it was with the Master, and so shall it be with the disciple.[[28]]