two; and the general opinion among them, to which the clause in the creed must have been intended to give expression, most certainly was that Christ descended into some region which they never speak of as Paradise, where were the souls of the faithful who had died under the Old Covenant, that He announced to them the accomplishment of His work of redemption, and then transferred them to Paradise. Something more will have to be said on this subject later on. For the present we pass on to the consideration of the next passage of Scripture alleged as proof of the doctrine.

(b) Acts ii. 24-31. In these verses S. Peter quotes and applies the language of David in Psalm xvi.: “I beheld the Lord always before my face, for He is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh also shall dwell in hope: because Thou wilt not Paradise and Inferi, holding that the martyrs, and they alone, go direct to Paradise. All others, including the souls of the faithful generally, are apud inferos. But this region is divided into two parts, "Sinus Abrahæ" (which is thus distinguished from Paradise), and the place assigned to the wicked. The patriarchs and prophets were apud inferos, and to them Christ descended to make them compotes sui. Cf. Adv. Marcion. iv. 34. In Apol. 47, Paradise is the place of heavenly bliss, appointed to receive the spirits of the saints, apparently after the last judgment. Irenæus (V. xxxi.) has much about the "place where the souls of the dead were," the "invisible place allotted by God," where souls "remain till the resurrection," but nowhere identifies it with Paradise. According to Origen there is an upper and a lower Paradise. To the lower one (= Abraham's bosom) go the souls of the righteous, and thither Christ transferred the souls of the patriarchs and prophets. See hom. in Num. xxvi. 4, and hom. ii. in 1 Reg. In Augustine, De Genesi ad Literam, bk. xii. ch. xxxiii, the reader will find a very interesting discussion of the meaning of the terms Inferi, Sinus Abrahæ, and Paradise. Augustine admits that the place where the souls of the just are is sometimes called Inferi, but points out that Lazarus is not said to be apud inferos, whereas Dives is. Cf. also Ep. ad Dardanum, clxxxvii., where Augustine admits that the explanation of our Lord's saying to the penitent thief, which refers it to the descent into hell, is a possible one, though, as he thinks, involving considerable difficulties.

leave my soul in Hades (eis adŋv), neither wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption. Thou madest known unto me the ways of life; Thou shalt make me full of gladness with Thy countenance." These words, the apostle proceeds to show, received no adequate fulfilment in the person of David. They could not, therefore, find their ultimate realisation in his experience. "He both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us unto this day." They look forward beyond the life and death of the patriarch, and find their complete realisation in the person of the Messiah. David, " being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins He would set one upon his throne, he foreseeing this spake of the resurrection of the Christ, that neither was He left in Hades (eis ädnv) nor did His flesh see corruption." The witness of this passage to the fact of the descent is equally clear with that of the one previously cited, though it says nothing of the object of the descent, or of the nature of the region visited.

(c) Eph. iv. 9: "Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth (εἰς τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς, Vulg. in inferiores partes terræ)? He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things."

This passage cannot be appealed to without some hesitation, for the interpretation of it is not absolutely certain. Two different views have been taken of its meaning. First, that which takes it of the descent into hell; a view which finds large support among both ancient and modern commentators, and which can claim in its favour the use of the term τὰ κατώτατα τῆς γῆς in the LXX. rendering of Psalm lxii. (lxiii) 10, and of the kindred phrase ἐν τοῖς κατωτάτω (κατωτάτοις, & ART) τῆς

yês in cxxxviii. (cxxxix.) 15.

Indeed, as Bishop Pearson says, "This exposition must be confessed so probable, that there can be no argument to disprove it." But though it is the most probable, yet it is not the only possible interpretation of the apostle's words; for, secondly, they may be taken as contrasting the earth beneath with the heaven above, and thus allude not to the descensus in inferna, but simply to the fact of the Incarnation, when Christ came down" or descended into" the earth beneath.1

(d) The last passage to be considered brings us face to face with the whole question of the object of the descent. Were it not for the language of S. Peter in his First Epistle (1 Pet. iii. 18-iv. 6) there would be no grounds for looking for any further object of the descent into hell than this: that Christ might fulfil the conditions of death as really and truly as of life. If Hell or Hades merely means the unseen world of departed spirits, then death in the case of every human being, consisting as it does of the separation of the soul and body, ipso facto involves a "descent into hell" on the part of everyone who is subject to it. If, then, our Lord really died upon the cross, it was a necessity that His human soul should pass into the world of spirits, and "descend into hell." "Christ in dying shared to the full our lot. His body was laid in the tomb. His soul passed into that state on which we conceive that our souls shall enter. He has won for God, and hallowed every condition of human existence. We cannot be where He has not been. He bore our nature as living: he bore our nature as dead." 2 This, then, namely, to fulfil the conditions of death, may

1 For a full discussion of this passage see the Commentaries of Meyer and Ellicott, in loc. Both these writers decide in favour of its reference to the descent into hell.

2 Westcott's Historic Faith, p. 76.

unhesitatingly be set down as one object of the descent. It remains to consider whether the language of S. Peter compels us to maintain that there was a yet further object of it, namely, the preaching of the gospel to them who were sometime disobedient.

1 Pet. iii. 18 seq.: "Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit (θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκὶ, ζωοποιη θεὶς δὲ πνεύματι): in which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison (ἐν ᾧ καὶ τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασι πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν), which aforetime were disobedient when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah. [ch. iv. 6] For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit (εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ νεκροῖς εὐηγγελίσθη, ἵνα κριθῶσι μὲν κατὰ ἀνθρώπους σαρκὶ, ζῶσὶ δὲ κατὰ Θεὸν πνεύματι)."

It has been already mentioned that the direct reference to this passage was struck out of the Article in its passage through Convocation in 1563, owing to the controversies which were then agitating the country. But although there was manifested an unwillingness to bind a particular interpretation of what is confessedly a very difficult passage upon the consciences of the clergy, yet the judgment of the English Church as to the meaning of S. Peter's words is not obscurely indicated by the retention of the passage as the epistle for Easter Eve, an occasion for which it is obviously appropriate only if it be taken as referring to the descent into hell.

In the early Church it would appear that there was no doubt whatever concerning the reference of the apostle's words. The first writer who directly connects the passage with the descent is believed to be Clement of

Alexandria. In this he is followed by Origen.1 Nor is there a trace of any other interpretation till the days of Augustine. He, however, in a letter to Evodius, Bishop of Uzala, enters fully into the exegesis of the words, and concludes his discussion by deciding that they have nothing whatever to do with the descent into hell, but refer to the teaching of Christ—in the spirit not in the flesh-to the unbelieving in the days of Noah.2 Augustine's authority was naturally of great weight in the Western Church. His view on this subject is adopted by Bede, by S. Thomas Aquinas, and, as might be expected, found favour with many of the Reformers; and it must be admitted that "the dominant exegesis of 1 Pet. iii. 19, among the English theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has been that which disconnects it altogether from the descent into Hades.1

In spite, however, of this, there is little doubt that Augustine and those who followed his lead in this matter are wrong. They have often failed to see clearly the distinction between Hades and Gehenna, and have sometimes been misled by the erroneous reading, T TVеúμATI, as, for instance, was Bishop Pearson, who interprets the clause. not of the human soul of Christ, but of the power of His Divinity; an explanation which can hardly be maintained when the definite article is deleted, for the phrase θανατωθεὶς μέν σαρκὶ, ζωοποιηθεὶς δὲ πνεύματι can point

Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, VI. vi. ; Origen, In Matt. 132.

2 The whole letter (No. clxiv.) is worth careful study. "The spirits in prison" are explained by Augustine as "souls which were at the time still in the bodies of men, and which being shut up in the darkness of ignorance were, so to speak, 'in prison'-a prison such as that from which the Psalmist sought deliverance in the prayer, 'Bring my soul out of prison that I may praise Thy name."