Job 7:5

"My body is formed of the rotten worms:" of an infinite number of verses. "And the earth has watered over the defilement of my wounds. Such are the desires and worries of the wicked, when they joyfully recount their sins. They make an occasion of sin, of what excites others to repentance, are dogs who come to lick the wounds of Lazarus (1).

My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust: my skin is dried up and shrunken. But we shall make out these words more exactly and more applicably, if we go back to the order of the foregoing interpretation. For by sleep the torpor of inaction, and by rising the exercising of action, is represented. And hence this same cause of these pains is brought in immediately afterwards, when it is said, My flesh is clothed with corruption and foulness of dust. For, as we have said a little above, man wilfully forsook his innate stability, and plunged himself into the abyss of corruption: and hence now he either goes slipping in impure works, or defiled by forbidden thoughts. For, so to speak, being judicially bowed down beneath its own sin, our nature its very self is put out of the pale of nature, and, when let loose, it is carried even to the length of bad works, while, being held in, it is dimmed by the pressing imagination of bad works. Thus in the fulfilment of a forbidden deed, 'corruption' taints the flesh, while in the lightness of evil thought, dust as it were rises up before the eyes. By consenting to evil practices we are wasted with corruption, but by suffering in the heart the images of evil deeds, we are defiled with the stains of dust; and so he says, My flesh is clothed with foulness of dust. As if it were in plain words; 'The carnal life that I am subjected to, either the corruption of wanton practice defiles, or the cloud of wretched thought compasses about in the recollection of evil ways. And yet if we take this in the voice of the Holy Church Universal, doubtless we find her at one time sunk to the earth by the 'corruption' of the flesh, at another time by 'the defilement of dust.' For she has many in her, who whilst they are devoted to the love of the flesh, turn corrupt with the putrefaction of excess. And there are some that keep indeed from the gratification of the flesh, yet grovel with all their heart in earthly practices. So let Holy Church say in the words of one of her members, let her say what she undergoes from either sort of men, My flesh is clothed with corruption, and the defilements of dust. As if she told in plain words, saying, 'There are very many that are members of me in faith, yet these are not sound or pure members in practice: in that either being mastered by foul desires, they run out in the rottenness of corruption;…