' I give a full and undoubting assent unto this as to a certain truth, that when all the sufferings of Christ were finished on the Cross, and His soul was separated from His body, thniig^h His body were dead, yet His soul died not ; and Lhnnirh it died not, yet it underwent the condition of the souls of suid a? die ; and being [i.e. since] He died in the similitude of a siiin'r, His snul went to the place where the souls of men are kept wlio die for their sins, and so did wholly undergo the law of death."
Barrow taught to the same effect (Serm. xxviii.) : ' If we do thus interpret our Saviour's descent into hell, for His soul's going into the common receptacle and mansion of souls, we shall so doing be sure not substantially to mistake.' He adds : ' I cannot well be at the pain to consider or examine those conceits, which pretend to acquaint us why and to what eft'ect our Saviour descended into hell.' This almost contemptuous refusal to discuss the passages in St. Peter is partly explained by the gaps in the line of evidence of early Christian tradition which was known at that time. Coming from a man of Barrow"'s calibre, it has probably had great weight.
On the other hand, Jeremy Taylor,* while he avoids any explanation of St. Peter's reference to the Deluge, maintains the Patristic view that Christ improved the condition of holy souls.
' And then it was that Christ made their condition better ; for though still it be a place of relation in order to something beyond it, yet the term and object of their hope is changed : they sate in the regions of darkness, expecting that great promise made to .\dam and the patriarchs, the promise of the Messias; but when He that was promised came, He "preached to the spirits in prison," He conmiunicat^d to them the mysteries of the gospel, the secrets of the kingdom, the things hidden from eternal ages, and taught them to look up to the glories purchased by His passion, and made the t€rm of their expecta- tion be His second coming, and the objects of their hope the glories of the beatific \ision. . . . But now it was that in the dark and undiscemed mansions there was a scene of the greatest joy and the greatest horror represented, which yet was known since the first falling of the morning stars. Those holy souls, whom the prophet Zechariah calls " prisoners of hope," lying in the lake where there is no water, that is, no constant stream of joy to refresh their present condition (yet supported with certain showers and gracious visitations from God and illumina- tions of their hope) ; now that they saw their Redeemer come to change their condition, and to improve it into the neighbour- hoods of glory and clearer revelations, nmst needs have the joy of intelligent and beatified understandings, of redeemed cap- tives, of men forgiven after the sentence of death, of men satisfied after a t«dious expectation, enjo^-ing and seeing their Lord, whom, for so many ages, they had expected. But the accursed spirits, seeing the darkness of their prison shine with a new light, and their empire invaded, and their retirements of horror discovered, wondered how a man durst venture thither, or, if he were a God, how he should come to die.*
Bishop Horsley's sermon on 1 P 3'" at the enil of the 18th cent, is the next important contribution to the subject. He regretted the alteration of the Third Article of 1563. He found it difficult to believe that ' of the millions who died in the Flood all died impenitent.' He taught that Christ 'cer- tainly preaclied neitlier repentance nor faith, for the preaching of either comes too late for the departed soul.' He faced the great difficulty why only this one class of penitents should be mentioned, having 'observed in some parts of Scripture an anxiety, if the expression may be allowed, of the sacred writers to convey distinct intimations that tlie antediluvian race is not uninterested in the redemption and the final retribution.' The follow- ing words also deserve quotation, for they go to * ed. Eden, ii. 718, 720.
the root of the matter. ' If the clear assertions of Holy Writ are to be discredited on account of difficulties which may seem to the human mind to arise out of them, little will remain to be believed in revealed or even in what is called natural religion.'
About the same time. Dr. Hey, Norrisian Pro- fessor at Cambridge, gave in his lectures a succinct account of the history of the doctrine, and discussed the difficulty of usin^ the metaphor of descent in popular language (3rd ed. p. 654).
There is an excellent survey of the literature of the subject do^\^l to the middle of the last century in Dean Alford's Greek Testament. Both he and Bishop Wordsworth accepted the Patristic view- that Christ preached salvation to the disembodied spirits of those drowned in the Flood if found penitent. Thus light is thrown on 'one of the darkest enigmas of Divine justice.' Bishop Harold Browne expounded the Article to the same effect, and has been followed recently by Bishop Gibson. But not all writers were equallj' bold. Bishop Harvey Goodwin was content with what was practically Pearson's position. Bishop Westcott {Historic Faith, p. 77) feared to say more on ' a mystery where our thought fails us and Scripture is silent.' Surely this is too dogmatic in face of the great consen.sus of opinion which interprets 1 P 318 literally.