Verse 12. — God has shut me up with the unjust, and has delivered me into the hands of the impious. 16. The elect temporally given over to the persecutions of the ancient enemy. — The people of the elect is shut up with the unjust when its flesh is given over temporally to the persecutions of the ancient enemy. It is delivered not to the spirit, but into the hands of the impious, because, the less they can seize this people in mind, the more cruelly they burn against its flesh. But the people of holy Church, when it has begun grievously to endure adversities, and has beheld its weak ones sliding down to worse things, calls back to mind the times of its peace, when it was feeding its faithful with the opulence of its preaching. Whence it is fittingly added: