46. I have frequently seen an Englishman who became famous for a book he published some years back, in which he had made great efforts to prove that faith and charity are linked by the influence and inner working of the Holy Spirit. He asserted that this influence worked in a manner that cannot be described and without the person's knowledge, but that it did not touch, much less openly affect the will, or rouse the person to think of doing anything as of himself, except by permission, so that nothing of the person should enter into Divine Providence. He said that in this way evils were hidden from God's sight, thus ruling out the outward exercise of charity for the sake of any part in salvation, though approving of it for the sake of the public good. Since he used the most ingenious arguments and did not appear to be a snake in the grass, his book was regarded as the height of orthodoxy. [2] The same writer after leaving the world kept to a similar dogma, and was unable to abandon it because he had proved it to himself. Angels talked with him and told him it was not the truth, but only a clever display of eloquence. They said that the truth is that a person ought to shun evil and do good as if of himself, yet acknowledging that good comes from the Lord. Before he did this he had no faith, let alone the kind of thinking he called faith. Since this was contrary to his dogma, he was allowed to use his acuteness of mind to go on enquiring into the question, whether such an unknown influence and inner working was possible without the outward working of the person concerned. He was then seen concentrating and wandering through the streets wrapped in thought, always clinging to the erroneous belief that in no other way could a person be made new and saved. But whenever he came to the end of a street, his eyes were opened and he saw he had gone astray, as he also admitted to those with him. I saw him wandering about like this for two years, and at the end of the streets admitting that such influence is impossible, unless the evil in the external man is taken away, which happens by shunning evils as sins as if of oneself. At last I heard him declare that all who are convinced of that heresy are driven mad by pride in their own intelligence.