Psalms 7:5

'Let the enemy pursue my soul, and take it.' 'The last enemy, death, is destroyed.' 'And let him tread down my life into the earth.' Life cannot be trodden down. 'And let him bring down my glory into the dust.' 'If,' he says, 'I have rendered evils to my enemies for evils, may I not rise again.'

The soul of the one who is just, severing itself from affection for the body, has its life hidden with Christ in God, so that it can say like the apostle: "It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live in faith." But the soul of the sinner and of one who lives according to the flesh and is defiled by the pleasures of the body is wrapped up in the passions of the flesh as in mud; and the enemy, trampling on this soul, strives to pollute it still more and, as it were, to bury it, treading on him who has fallen, and with his feet trampling him into the ground.

"Let the enemy" therefore "persecute my soul and take it" (ver. 5). By again naming the enemy in the singular number, he more and more clearly points out him whom he spoke of above as a lion. For he persecutes the soul, and if he has deceived it, will take it. For the limit of men's rage is the destruction of the body; but the soul, after this visible death, they cannot keep in their power: whereas whatever souls the devil shall have taken by his persecutions, he will keep. "And let him tread my life upon the earth:" that is, by treading let him make my life earth, that is to say, his food. For he is not only called a lion, but a serpent too, to whom it was said, "Earth shalt thou eat." And to the sinner was it said, "Earth thou art, and into earth shalt thou go." "And let him bring down my glory to the dust." This is that dust which "the wind casteth forth from the face of the earth," to wit, vain and silly boasting of the proud, puffed up, not of solid weight, as a cloud of dust carried away by the wind. Justly then has he here spoken of the glory, which he would not have brought down to dust. For he would have it solidly established in conscience before God, where there is no boasting. "He that glorieth," saith the Apostle, "let him glory in the Lord." This solidity is brought down to the dust if one through pride despising the secrecy of conscience, where God only proves a man, desires to glory before men. Hence comes what the Psalmist elsewhere says, "God shall bruise the bones of them that please men." Now he that has well learnt or experienced the steps in overcoming vices, knows that this vice of empty glory is either alone, or more than all, to be shunned by the perfect. For that by which the soul first fell, she overcomes the last. "For the beginning of all sin is pride:" and again, "The beginning of man's pride is to depart from God."