Empty Glory and Pride Need No Help from the Body

To go on in the order we proposed, with our account of the way the other passions work (our analysis had to be interrupted by this account of gluttony and of the Lord’s temptation): empty glory and pride can be carried through without the slightest help from the body. For how do those passions need any act of the flesh, when they bring ample destruction on the soul they take captive simply by its consent and its wish to gain praise and glory from men? Or what act of the body was there in that ancient pride of Lucifer, whom we mentioned above? He only conceived it in his heart and mind, as the prophet tells us: “You who said in your heart, ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of God. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.’” And just as he had no one to stir him up to this pride, so his thoughts alone were the authors of the completed sin and of his eternal fall, especially since no exercise of the dominion he aimed at ever followed. [a]