64. He is able to ascend to the understanding of lofty things who has chastised the incentives of the flesh.—The mountains of pasture are the lofty contemplations of inward refreshment. For holy men, the more they cast themselves down by outwardly despising themselves, so much the more are they inwardly fed with the contemplation of revelations. Whence it is written: He hath disposed ascents in his heart, in the vale of tears (Ps. 83[84]:6-7); because those whom the valley of humility keeps outwardly in weeping, the ascent of contemplation inwardly lifts up. [Job 39, Vulg. 29] The mountains of pasture are also the sublime virtues of the angels. These refresh us here by ministering and helping, because there they grow fat with the inward dew of contemplation.
And because, by God's bounty, they protect us in every contest, they are rightly said to be looked round about. For we look round about to see them present to us on every side, by whose defense we are fortified against our adversaries on every flank. The mountains of pasture may further be taken as the lofty sentences of Holy Scripture, of which it is said through the Psalmist: The high mountains for the harts (Ps. 103[104]:18); because those who now know how to give the leaps of contemplation ascend the high summits of the divine sentences as it were the peaks of mountains—to which peaks, because the weak cannot attain, it is rightly there subjoined: The rock a refuge for the hedgehogs (ibid.); because, namely, it is not lofty understanding that exercises the weak, but faith in Christ alone that humbly holds them. There follows: