which he says that _he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit_.

[Footnote 1: St. Francis de Sales was spoken of as _Our Blessed Father_,
not only by the Visitation Nuns, but in the whole neighbourhood of Annecy.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. _The Depositions of St. Chantal_. Point 24th.]


UPON TEMPTATIONS AGAINST FAITH.

_He who is not tempted what knows he?_ says Holy Scripture. God is
faithful, and will not permit us to be tempted beyond our strength; nay, if
we are faithful to Him, He enables us to profit by our tribulation. He not
only helps us, but He makes us find our help in the tribulation itself, in
which, thinking we were perishing, we cried out to Him to save us.

Those who imagine themselves to be in danger of losing the Faith, when the
temptations suggested to them by the enemy against this virtue, harass and
distress them, understand very little of the nature of temptations. For,
besides that temptation cannot harm us, as long as it is displeasing to us,
which is the teaching of one of the early Fathers, it actually, in such
case, produces an absolutely contrary effect to what we fear, and to the
aim of our adversary, the devil. For just as the palm tree takes deeper and
stronger root, the more it is tossed and shaken by the winds and storms,
so the more we are tossed by temptation, the more firmly are we settled in
that virtue which the temptation was striving to overthrow.

As we see from the lives of the Saints, the most chaste are those who
oppose the greatest resistance to the goad of sensuality, and the most
patient are those who struggle the most earnestly against impatience. It
is for this reason that Holy Scripture says: _Happy is he who suffers