I might here farther add the sentinients of Petrus Chrysologus, Gennadius Massiliensis, Gregory the great, and several others of the succeeding writers, but I think it will be an unnecessary as well as tedious labor, seeing the generality of the Latin fathers of the middle ages, embraced the forementioned notion of Origen, Ambrose, and others, which was occasioned through the mutation and declension of the Latin tongue, whereby the word inferi, or hell, received a considerable change in its meaning and signification, being for the most part taken in an evil sense; according to which apprehension and notion thereof, new ways and ends of our Saviour's descent thither, were imagined and invented. But, as I have already shewn, the word hell, according to its primary and original import, doth prinpipally signify no other than the state or place into which all separated souls do pass, and there remain till the resurrection-day; in which sense it is to be frequently understood in the Septuagent, and cannot in any propriety of speech be otherwise accepted in that text, whereon this article of the creed is founded, viz. Acts ii. 27. "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption," because the soul's being in hell, is there opposed to and distin

guished from the bodies being in the grave; and being applied by the apostle to our Savi Qur's resurrection, it is as if he should have thus expressed it in other words, that although Christ Jesus died, and according to the manner of all mankind, his soul went into hell, the common receptacle of all disunited spirits, and his body was buried in the grave; yet God raised his body from the corruption of the one and loosened his soul from the bonds of the other, re-uniting those two essential parts in a most wonderful and glorious resurrection * according to which pattern of our Lord and Saviour, all his followers shall, at the time appointed by the Almighty, be rescued both in body and soul from the power of the grave and hell; when, as the apostle writes, "shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where it thy sting?" O grave, or, O hell, as it is in the Greek, being the same word that is used in the creed, where is thy victory? That is, at the resurrection-day, through the omnipotent power of God, the grave shall be forced to yield up her dead bodies, and hell her separated souls, that so all souls and bodies being re-united, they may in their perfect humanity stand before the tribunal of Jesus Christ, and receive a sentence suitable to their works in the flesh, and the execution of that

= sentence throughout a never ending life, either in eternal misery or felicity; which is the exact description given by St. John, of the general resurrection and judgment-day, in Rev. xx. 13, 14. And death and hell deliv ered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every man according to their works; and death and hell were cast into the = Jake of fire; this is the second death;" that is, death or the grave surrendered her imprisoned bodies and hell her detained souls, after which their empire and power over the children of men was destroyed and annihila ted: From all which it appears most evident, that the chief and proper signification of the word hell, is no other than the place of separated souls; and that by consequence, the

descending of Christ into hell," imports no more than the passage of his soul to that invisible world of separated spirits, where acCording to the laws of God and nature, it remained in rest and peace till his resurrectionday.

But then secondly, the next thing to be enquired into for the full explication of this atticle, is the manner of our Saviour's going into hell, which in the creed is expressed by descending thither, katelthen eis hadou, he descended into hell.

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Now as for this word katelthen, translated descended, archbishop Usher assures us, "that in the Acts of the apostles it is used ten times, and in none of all those places signifieth any descending from an higher place unto a lower, but a removing simply from one place unto a nother; whereupon, the vulgar Latin edition doth render it there by the general terms of abeo, venio, devenio, supervenio; and where it retaineth the word descendo, it intendeth nothing less than to signify thereby the lower situation of the place unto which the removal is noted to be made; if descending therefore in the Acts of the apostles (as the said archbishop continue to write,) imply no such kind or thing, what necessity is there, that thus of force it must be interpreted in the creed of the apostles?" So that, according to this interpretation, the word descended implies no more than the simple passage of the soul of Christ into hell, the habitation and mansion of all severed and disunited spirits.

And the reason of the use of this word beyond any other, was, because it was a vulgar expression and a popular kind of speech, arising from the generally received opinion, that the receptacles of departed souls were under the earth, or in the heart and bowels thereof; whence called by the Latins Infernum, and

by the Greeks katakthonia, and ta katotera, that is, the nether and lower parts; and ades quasi aides, that invisible, because those places are imperceptible and unseen by the living; according to which received opinion of the Heathens, the fathers also generally believed hell to be either under the earth, or in the bowels of it; in which belief they were the more confirmed from that in resemblance to the prophet Jonah, who in his soul as well as body, was three days and three nights in the Whale's belly; the son of man was to be "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth," as it is in Matth. xii. 40. which is a place that they generally applied to our Saviour's soul, during the three days of its separation from his body.

About the beginning of the prophet Jonah's I prayer out of the fish's belly, there is this expression, [Johah ii. 3.]" for thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; where, what we render "in the midst," St. Jerome more exactly translates it, "in the heart of the seas;" and on it writes, "that by the heart of the sea, hell is signified; for which we read in the gospel, the heart of the earth, for, as the heart of an animal is in the midst thereof, so hell is supposed to be in the middle of the earth:" for the proof of which,

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