Gregory the Great

Ver. 12. God hath shut me up with the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.

The people of the Elect is 'shut up with the ungodly man,' when its flesh is given up in this present time to the persecutions of our old adversary; and it is 'turned over,' not to the spirit, but 'the hands of the wicked;' in that in proportion as they cannot take it captive in mind, they are the more pitilessly inflamed against the flesh thereof. But the People of Holy Church, when it begins to suffer adversities to an extreme degree, and sees the weak ones in her going off to worse and worse, recalls to mind the times of her peace, when she fed her faithful children with the richness of her preaching.