50. Her outermost members, as it were her feet, are sometimes overthrown. — What do we signify by the feet of the Church, if not her outermost members? These, while they serve earthly works, can be the more swiftly deceived by adversaries the less they understand the things on high. These feet, then, the adversaries overthrow, namely when they draw the outermost members of her to the error of their own dogma. Feet overthrown cannot keep to the way, when each weak one, being persuaded by his persecutors' promises, or terrified by threats, or broken by torments, strays from the right path. And well are the paths of the adversaries compared to floods, when it is said:
And they have overwhelmed, as with floods, by their paths; because, namely, the life of the depraved, troublesome with insolent restlessness, glides in as a tempest to overwhelm, so to speak, the ship of the heart. Of which tempest it is said through Solomon: As a tempest that passeth, so the wicked shall be no more (Prov. x, 25). And when any weak one beholds the perverse flourishing, the wave of wretched imitation drowns him in the sea of perversity. There follows: