body was that day to be broken and mangled by Eoman soldiers. But the thief himself was to be with Christ.
Maldonatus, the Roman Catholic commentator, struggles in vain to show that the passage before us does not disprove pur- gatory. He maintains that the thief must have believed in purgatory, from the fact of his praying to be remembered when Christ came in His kingdom, and not before ! Such arguing shows the straits to which a man is reduced by an unscriptural theory.
[In paradise.] The word so translated is only found in two other places in the New Testament. (2 Cor. xii. 4. and Rev. ii. 7.) Parkhurst says, " This is without controversy an oriental word. The Greeks borrowed it from the Persians, among whom it signified a garden, park, or inclosure, full of all the valuable products of the earth. In this sense the word is found in Herodotus, Xenophon, and Diodorus. In the New Testament the word is applied to the state of faithful souls between death and the resurrection, when like Adam in Eden, they are admitted to immediate communion with God in Christ, and to a participa- tion of the true tree of life."
Brentius maintains that the passion of Christ opened Paradise, which had been closed since Adam fell, and that these words proclaimed the opening.
It is clear from the whole narrative that the penitent thief died unbaptized. To avoid this difficulty some writers of Romish tendency have actually caught at the idea, suggested by Augustine, that he was baptized with the blood and water which came from our Lord's side, when it was pierced with a* spear! This baseless and gratuitous assertion shows the ab- surdities into which men may be driven to maintain their theory of baptismal regeneration. It is clear that the thief was bom again. It is equally clear that he was never baptized. It fol- lows therefore that a man may be bom again without baptism.
The general remarks made by all the best commentators on the case of the penitent thief are very striking. It would be impossible to give them all. Cornelius a Lapide collects many good things from the Fathers, and Gerhard is peculiarly full of good matter in considering the whole narrative.
Heinsius remarks that Christ never wrought a greater or more illustrious miracle than He did in saving the penitent thief.
The Church of England Homily of Good Works, quotes Chry sostom, saying, " I can show a man that by faith without works lived and came to heaven : but without faith never man had life. The thief, that was hanged when Christ suffered, did be- lieve only, and the most merciful God justified him. And be-
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