Ibid.—'Therefore they shall not be exalted.' 37. Those without discipline are never raised from the lowest things to heavenly ones.—For if the heart were under discipline, it would seek the things above, it would not gape after the transitory goods to be acquired. Of those, therefore, whose heart is not under discipline, it is rightly said: 'Therefore they shall not be exalted,' because, while, abandoned amid the lowest pleasures, they ever desire earthly goods, they never lift up their heart to the joys above. For they would indeed be exalted if they raised their mind to the hope of the heavenly homeland. But those who by no means strive to guard their life through discipline ever lie amid the lowest things through their desires; and, what is graver, in lying down they raise themselves up, because they are lifted up over transitory things.
But they can be lifted up, yet cannot be exalted, because they are the more deeply in the lowest place from that very thing wherein they become higher in their own esteem. And so the heart which is without discipline cannot be exalted, because the human mind, just as when evilly lifted up it is pressed down among the lowest things, so when well pressed down it is raised into the sublime. There follows: