e was upon a path which led to failure.
Despair took possession of his soul, sometimes prompting him to end his
life by suicide, sometimes plaguing him with hideous visions. At last he
fell dangerously ill. Enlightened by the expectation of early death, he
then became convinced that his fanatical asceticism was a folly. The
despair, the dreadful phantoms which had haunted him, were ascribed
immediately to the devil. In those rarer visitings of brighter visions,
which sometimes brought consolation, bidding him repose upon God's
mercy, he recognized angels sent to lead him on the pathway of
salvation. God's hand appeared in these dealings; and he resolved to
dedicate his body as well as his soul to God's service, respecting both
as instruments of the divine will, and entertaining both in efficiency
for the work required of them.

The experiences of Manresa proved eminently fruitful for the future
method of Ignatius. It was here that he began to regard self-discipline
and self-examination as the needful prelude to a consecrated life. It
was here that he learned to condemn the ascetism of anchorites as
pernicious or unprofitable to a militant Christian. It was here that,
while studying the manual of devotion written by Garcia de Cisneros, he
laid foundations for those famous _Exercitia_, which became his
instrument for rapidly passing neophytes through spiritual training
similar to his own. It was here that he first distinguished two kinds of
visions, infernal and celestial. Here also he grew familiar with the
uses of concrete imagination;, and understood how the faculty of
sensuous realization might be made a powerful engine for presenting the
past of sacred history or the dogmas of orthodox theology under shapes
of fancy to the mind. Finally, in all the experiences of Manresa, he
tried the temper of his own character, which was really not that of a
poet or a mystic, but of a sagacious man of action, preparing a system
calculated to subjugate the intelligence and will of millions. Tested by
self-imposed sufferings and by diseased hallucinations, his sound sense,
the sense of one destined to control men, gathered energy, and grew in,
solid strength: yet enough remained of his fanaticism to operate as a
motive force in the scheme which he afterwards developed; enough
survived from the ascetic phase he had surmounted, to make him
comprehend that some such agony as he had suffered should form the
vestibule to a devoted life. W