The same. — 'Why am I consumed while keeping silence?' 53. Whose penance is to be done in secret. — For he is consumed while keeping silence who, reproaching himself for foolish thought, is gnawed within himself by the tooth of conscience. As if he plainly said: 'As I have lived so that I feared no accuser outwardly, would that I had so lived that I did not have within myself an accusing conscience!' For he is consumed while keeping silence who finds within himself that whereby he is burned. There follows: Verse 20. — 'Only do not two things unto me, and then I shall not hide myself from thy face.' 54. From God's animadversion no one is safe. In this place, what ought we to understand by the face of God but his animadversion, in which, while he regards sins, he punishes them?