Verse 20. — 'Do not prolong the night, that peoples may rise up in their place.' 77. It is night for the Church, when the unlearned and weak occupy the places of the learned and strong. — As if the arrogant were openly to say: 'Do not act through the darkness of your ignorance, so that in the place of the strong you substitute a great number of the weak.' By the name of 'peoples' are designated those who, as it were given over to vulgar custom, live at large in all the things they crave. To prolong the night is that peoples rise up in place of the strong, if through negligence it comes about that the unlearned and weak obtain by lot the places of the learned and strong. Peoples rise up in place of the strong when those who have learned to live wickedly receive the places of shepherds. This indeed could rightly have been said, if it had been said humbly.
For the arrogant, even when they admonish good things, exercise the vice of their superstition. For, as was also said above, they seek rather to strike by rebuking than to cherish by consoling. Whence there is soon subjoined: Verse 21. — 'Do not turn aside to iniquity; for this you have begun to follow after your misery.' This indeed the arrogant call the misery of the Church, that they suspect her multitude to be despised by God; and they despise her with the loftier elation, the more they suspect her to be utterly despised by God. Having therefore run through these things by a figurative exposition, we must now bring forward those things which are perceived morally, so that, the figure of the Church being known — which we believe to be expressed generally — we may hear also what from these words we may gather specially in individuals.