all heavenly happiness and blessedness ; and that they should be ex- pulsed out of the blessed presence of" God, who is mentium lumen. It is usual among the Greeks by a comparative to set forth the superlative degree. By outer darkness we are to understand the greatest darkness that is, as in a place most remote from all light. They shaU be cast into outer darkness, that is, they shall be cast into the corporal and palpable darkness of the infernal prison ; immediately after death sinners' souls shall be cast into the infernal prison, and in the day of judgment both their souls and their bodies shall be cast into outer darkness. Dark- ness is no other thing than a privation of light.
Now light is twofold, viz. — 1. Spiritual, as wisdom, grace, truth. Now the privation of this light is internal darkness, and ignorance in the spirit and inward man. 2. There is a sensible and corporal light, whose privation is outer darkness ; and this is the darkness spoken of in the three scriptures last cited. For although there be fire in hell, yet it is a dark and smoky fire, and not clear, except only so as the damned may see one another, for the greater increase of their misery, as some write. Now I shall leave the ingenuous reader to conclude as he pleases concerning the place where hell is, desiring and hoping that he will make it the greatest business of his life to escape hell, and to get to heaven, &c.
6. Sixthly, If Jesus Christ did feel and suffer the very torments of hell, though not after a hellish manner, then let me infer that certainly the papists are greatly out, they are greatly mistaken, and do greatly err, loho boldly and confidently assert that Christ's soul in substance loent really and locally into hell. Bellarmine takes a great deal of pains to make good this assertion,! but this great champion of the Komish church may easily be confuted. First, Because that limbus patrum, and Christ's fetching the fathers from the skirts of hell, about which he makes so great a noise, is a mere fable, and not bottomed upon any solid grounds of Scripture. Secondly, Because upon Christ's dying, and satisfying for our sins, his soul went that very day into paradise — as Adam sinning was that very day cast out of paradise — and his soul could not be in two places at once. Thirdly, Because this descent of Christ's soul into hell was altogether needless, and to no end. What need was there of it, or to what end did he descend ? Not to suffer in hell, for that was finished on the cross ; not to redeem or rescue the fathers out of hell, for the elect were never there, and redemption from hell was wrought by Chi'ist's death, as the Scriptures do clearly evidence ; not to triumph there over the devils, &c.,2 for Christ triumphed over them when he was on the cross.^ Christ, in the day of his solemn inaugura- tion into his heavenly kingdom, triumphed over sin, death, devils, and hell. When Christ was on the cross, he made the devils a public spectacle of scorn and derision ; as Tamerlane did Bajazet the great Turk, whom he shut up in an iron cage made like a grate, in such
^ Bellar. de Christ, anima. lib. iv. cap. 10-16, torn. 1 . Vide Calvin in Institut. lib. 'ii. cap. 16, sect. 9.
=* Luke xxiii. 43; Gen. iii. 23, 24 ; John xviii. 30 ; Heb. ix. 12 ; 1 Tbes. i. 10; Eph. : iv. 8 ; Heb. ii. 14, 15 ; Col. ii. 14, 15.
' It is a plain allusion to the Roman triumphs, where the victor ascended to the Capitol in a chariot of state, the prisoaers following on foot with their hands bound be- hind them, &c.
146 THREE IMPROVEMENTS MORE TO BE MADE
sort as that he might on every side be seen, and so carried him up and down all Asia, to be scorned and derided by his own people, i By these few hints you may see the vanity and folly of the papists, who tell you that Christ's soul and substance went really and locally into hell. I might make other inferences, but let these suffice at this time.
7. Seventhly, As Jesus Christ did feel and suffer the very torments of hell, though not after a hellish manner, so Jesus Christ was really, certainly made a curse for us. Jesus Christ did in his soul and body bear that curse of the law, which by reason of transgression was due to us. ' Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us ; for it is written. Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree,' Gral iii. 13, He saith not Christ was cmsed, but a curse, which is more : it shows that thfi curse of all did lie upon him. The death on the tree was accursed above all kinds of deaths, as the serpent was accursed above all the beasts of the field, Gen. iii. 14. This scripture refers to Deut. xxi. 33, ' His body shall not remain all night upon the tree ; but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day, for he that is hanged is accursed of God.'^ The holy and wise God appointed this kind of punishment, as being the most cruel and reproachful, for a type of the punishment which his Son must suffer to deliver us from the curse. Hanging on a tree was accounted the most shameful, the most dishonourable, the most odious and infamous, and accursed, of all kinds of death, both by the Israelites and other nations, because the very manner of the death did intimate that such men as were thus executed were such execrable, base, vile, and accursed wretches, that they did defile the earth with treading on it, and would pollute the earth if they should die upon it, and therefore were hanged up in the air, as persons not fit to converse amongst men, or touch the sur- face of the ground any more. But what should be the reason why the ceremonial law affixed the curse to this death rather than any other death ? I answer, first, because this was reckoned the most shameful and dishonourable of all deaths, and was usually therefore the punish- ment of those that had by some notorious wickedness provoked God to pour out his wrath upon the whole land, and so were hanged up to appease his wrath ; as you may see in the hanging of those princes that were guilty of committing whoredom with the daughters of Moab, Num. XXV. 4 ; and in the hanging of Saul's seven sons in the days of David, when there was a famine in the land because of Saul's perfidi- ous oppressing of the Gibeonites, 2 Sam. xxi, 6-9 ; and in Joshua's hanging of the five kings of the Amorites, Josh, xvi. 26. But, secondly and mainly, it was with respect to the death Christ was to die. God would have his Son, the Lord Jesus, to suffer this kind of death, that hence it might be the more evident that in his death he bare the curse due to our sins, according to that of the apostle, Gal. iii. 13. Christ was certainly made that curse which he redeemed us from, otherwise the apostle does not reason either soundly or fairly, when he tells us we
^ [KnoUes,] Turk Hist. 220.