Note 18 — Chapter VIII

Using anger as an illustration, Father Baker enters into a detailed description of what may happen, and yet the soul be free from sin. Perhaps there is not one of us who can read the following words without a sense of deep gratitude and relief concerning not infrequent experiences of our own. He says: "A person being moved to anger, though he find an unquiet representation in the imagination, and a violent heat and motions about the heart, as likewise an aversion in sensitive nature against the person that hath given the provocation; yet if, notwithstanding, he refrains himself from breaking forth into words of impatience to which his passion would urge him, and withal contradicts designs of revenge suggested by passion, such an one, practicing internal prayer and mortification, is to esteem himself not to have consented to the motions of corrupt nature, although besides the inward motion of the appetite [i.e., the inferior will], he could not hinder marks of his passion from appearing in his eyes and the colour of his countenance."—Sancta Sophia, pp. 237-238.