As for what you say in your esteemed letter concerning temptations against the Faith, pay no attention to them. They are not real temptations. Your faith is immovable and secure in the depths of your soul: it was infused in your Baptism and has been fortified by other Sacraments. This does not prevent these fears and a certain trepidation from arising on the surface of the soul, as also doubts that are not real but apparent: things that God allows as trials to the souls most dear to Him, so that they may be more active and vigilant in His love and may purify themselves by means of tribulation. I do not consider them in the least dangerous or to be made account of. On the contrary, the more you despise them and treat them as movements of the imagination and sensitive nature (as they really are), the more easily they disappear of their own accord or become weakened. If you take these things seriously, and give them an importance they do not possess, it is easy to become disturbed and fearful: and fear and sadness have the effect of a lens that enlarges a fly until it appears an elephant. Nay they do more, for a soul filled with vain fear sees what does not exist.
Bl. Antonio Rosmini, Letters, on Chiefly Religious Subjects, p. 639.
