5. The pride of the hypocrite is said to ‘mount up unto the heavens,’ when his high-mindedness has the appearance of leading a heavenly life; and his ‘head as it were reaches unto the clouds,’ when the leading part, i.e. his intellect, is thought to equal the merits of the Saints that have gone before. Yet he ‘perishes at last like the dunghill,’ because at his death, when he is led to torments, being full of the dung of evil habits, he is trodden under foot of evil spirits. For the joys of the present life, which the unrighteous account great good, righteous men look upon as dung. Whence it is written; A slothful man is stoned with the dung of oxen. [Ecclus. 22, 2] Thus he that will not follow God is made slothful in the love of the life everlasting. And as often as he is stricken with the loss of temporal goods, he is surely troubled on the score of those things, which the righteous look down upon as ‘dung:’ what else is it with him, then, that is bruised with the buffeting of ...
