Like The Dead Of The World

Quia persecutus est inimicus animam meam, humiliavit in terra vitam meam, collocavit me in obscuris sicut mortuos saeculi. Obscuritas per corporis vitia effunditur: et cum per diaboli laqueos in cupiditates carnis incidimus, a cognitionis luce depulsi in obscuris collocamur, gentilium tenebris demersi, et saecularium operum nocte detenti. Sed quantumlibet persequens animam inimicus, et humilians in corpore tamquam mortuum saeculi collocet in obscuro; spiritalis tamen viri anxietas his corporis tenebris non tenetur, et cor super hac ipsa naturae suae infirmitate turbatur, repugnansque vitiis hominem suum in memoriam primae suae constitutionis et in meditationem Dei operum convertit. Non enim eum inimicus in obscuris mortuum saeculi, sed tamquam mortuum saeculi collocavit: per quod libertas spiritus semper in se anxii reservatur.    Sanctus Hilarius Pictaviensis,Tractatus super Psalmos, Tractatus in Psalmum CXLII Source: Migne PL 9.839b-c

Because the enemy has sought my soul, he has pressed down my life into the earth, he has gathered me into the darkness like the dead of the world. 1 The faults of the body pour forth darkness, and when we fall into the snares of the devil by corporeal desires, being cast down from knowledge of the light, we are gathered into darkness, and we sink into the darkness of the heathen, and we are held in the night of worldly works. But as much as the enemy seeks the soul, and presses down in the body, that it is as a gathering in the darkness of the long dead, however by the worry of the spiritual man in this he is not held in this bodily darkness, his troubled heart is raised above the infirmities of his own nature, and rejecting the faults of his own humanity in the recollection of his first creation, he turns to meditation on the works of God. For the enemy has not definitely gathered him among the dead of the world, but 'like' the dead of the world, from which he is kept by the freedom of the spirit being always in him by his anxiety. Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Homilies on the Psalms, from Psalm 142 1 Ps 142.3