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This is part of a continuing series.  An index of all posts on St. Francis de Sales' work Introduction to the Devout Life is here.  A post outlining part 4 of the book is here.

Chapters 3 through 6 of part 4, which I have been calling the "troubleshooting guide," have to do with temptations in general, both large and small; in them, St. Francis instructs us to distinguish three steps to sin.  (Enumeration and paragraph breaks added by me.)

…The world, the flesh and the devil send tempting suggestions to a soul espoused to Christ.

1. First the sin is proposed;
2. secondly the soul is either pleased or displeased;
3. thirdly the soul either consents or refuses.

These three steps to sin — temptation, pleasure in the temptation, consent — are not always easy to distinguish but they are clear enough in the case of grave sin.

"Clear enough in the case of grave sin?" I guess what St. Francis means is that if the sin is serious enough to endanger our soul, then we ought to be able to tell temptation from pleasure and consent well enough to make a free choice that we're fully responsible for.  Come to think of it, it would work equally well to say that if we can tell temptation from pleasure well enough to make our choice free, we might be dealing with serious sin; if we really can't tell, then our ignorance would mitigate our culpability.  Whatever:  if we can tell the difference, we're going to be responsible for the knowledge.

In Chapters 3 and 4, Francis is mostly concerned with letting us know that simply being tempted — noticing a temptation — is not necessarily our fault and is not itself a sin. 

Temptation of any sort, no matter how long it endures, cannot make us displeasing to God so long as we take no pleasure in it and do not yield; to be tempted is something passive, not active, and no blame attaches to us while we are opposed to it. 

If we find it disagreeable to be tempted, that's a good sign:

Have great courage, Philothea, in the midst of temptations, knowing that your displeasure is the sign of your victory, for it is one thing to experience temptations and another to consent to them; we may still feel them even though they displease us, but we can consent to them only if they please us, this pleasure being the first step to consent.

And it's even a good sign if we find ourselves of two minds about it, so that we might say "Part of me wants to, and part of me is repulsed":

Even with regard to this pleasure, we must remember that there is a superior and an inferior part of the soul; the inferior part does not always follow the superior part, but often goes its own way, taking pleasure in the temptation without and against the consent of the superior part, a conflict to which St Paul refers, when he says "the impulses of nature and the impulses of the spirit are at war with one another" (Gal. 5:17); and that "the disposition of the lower self raises war against the disposition of the conscience" (Rom. 7:23), and so on….

…[W]hen the inferior part of the soul is overlaid with terrible temptations, the whole souls seems covered with ashes, the love of God reduced to a spark in the very centre of the heart… so imperceptible that it hardly seems to be there at all; yet it is therel that resolution never to consent in the midst of temptations which flood the soul and body; that displeasure, in spite of an outward sense of pleasure, which prov es that though temptations may be all about the will they have not been admitted and that the pleasure, because involuntary, can be no sin.

St. Francis wants to give us the utmost benefit of the doubt.  It is clear that he is used to dealing with people who get discouraged because temptations tempt them and because the temptation is partly pleasurable to them — "I'll never get rid of these temptations, I can't help but take some pleasure in them, I must be so depraved there's no hope for me."  St. Francis wants us to think:  even if we do take pleasure in the temptations that assail us, if there is even the tiniest bit of us that rebels against temptation, that tiniest bit is the spark that "will serve to kindle the whole fire again." 

St. Francis admits that it is very difficult to be in this situation, because it's hard to know whether that bit of the will is really there; but, he says, to suffer this distress is itself a blessing:

How distressing to one who loves God not to know whether he is present in the soul or not, to be uncertain if that love by which and for which we fight is still alive; but to be asked to suffer thus is the fairest flower of perfect heavenly love.

If we need reassurance we have one thing to ask ourselves:

…[I]t sometimes happens that our soul seems to have lost use of its powers and to be bereft of spiritual life owing to the violence of temptation.  If this is the case we must…. consider if our will is still active in rejecting the temptation and pleasure as it should.  As long as this is the case we may be assured that we still possess charity, which is the life of the soul, and that Jesus Christ our Saviour is present in our soul, though hidden and concealed; so that by means of continual prayer, the sacraments, and confidence in God, we shall regain the strength to live a good and happy life.

Whew.  So, if I'm assailed by temptations, even if I am taking pleasure in those temptations to some extent, as long as my will is "still active" in rejecting the temptation and pleasure — not even if my will is totally successful! – there is hope for me by means of prayer, sacraments, and trust in God.

This is a very useful piece of information, especially for the scrupulous.

Chapter 6 has to do with moving past the innocent part of temptation to the not-so-innocent step of deliberately entertaining it and lingering on it, and also of inviting temptation by deliberately and unnecessarily entering a near occasion of sin.  

St. Francis makes some nice distinctions between taking delight in certain goods that may accompany a temptation, and taking delight in the temptation itself.  He gives a couple of examples; for example, if a man flirts with a woman while playing the lute beautifully, it's okay to enjoy the lute-playing but not the flirtation.  Or — well, see what you think about this one:

In the same way, if anyone suggests an ingenious and cunning way to revenge myself on an enemy and I simply take pleasure in the ingenuity of the plan and not in the thought of revenge, I do not sin at all;

Whew!  Oh sweet deviousness, I am free to revel in you!

…though, here again, I should not dwell too long on this pleasure lest it lead me to take pleasure in the thought of the revenge itself.

Hmph.

St. Francis goes on to explain that it does take time to resist a temptation, and the longer we take, the more serious the sin of delay.  (He seems to see a limit to the seriousness, though:  the sin of entertaining temptation, it seems, cannot rise past the level of gravity of the sin that is the subject of the temptation.)  

Sometimes a temptation takes us by surprise and we feel pleasure before we have had time to resist it; at the most this is a very light venial sin

…and only becomes more serious if, aware of the evil, we entertain the pleasure while we make up our mind whether to accept or reject it.

It becomes more serious still if once aware of it we dwell on it for any length of time through downright negligence, without making any effort to reject it;

but if we willingly and deliberately resolve to accept such pleasure, it is a grave sin if the temptation itself was grave.

Why bother going into such minute detail?  I think the reason is that the detail serves to help us be aware of the workings of our wills, and to diagnose the particular problems that might beset us.  I told you that part four is a troubleshooting guide, after all!