Unless
we act as though there were an enemy to be resisted and chained, if we
fritter away differences of kind into differences of degree, we shall
make poor work of life. Spinoza himself assumes that other commands
than God's may be given to us, but that we are unhesitatingly to obey
His and His only. "Ad fidem ergo catholicam," he says, "ea solummodo
pertinent, quae erga Deum OBEDIENTIA absolute ponit." Consciousness
seems to testify to the presence of two mortal foes within us--one
Divine and the other diabolic--and perhaps the strongest evidence is not
the rebellion of the passions, but the picturing and the mental
processes which are almost entirely beyond our control, and often
greatly distress us. We look down upon them; they are not ours, and yet
they are ours, and we cry out with St. Paul against the law warring with
the law of our minds. Bunyan of course knows the practical problem and
the rule, and to him the Devil is not merely the tempter to crimes, but
the great Adversary. In the Holy War the chosen regiments of Diabolus
are the Doubters, and notwithstanding their theologic names, they
carried deadlier weapons than the theologic doubters of to-day.
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