2 HELL
to see corruption, so he left not his soul in hell, and thereby gave sufficient seciu-ity to all those who belong to Christ of never coming under the power of Satan, or suffering in the flames prepared for the devil and his angels. And thus, and for these purposes, may every Christian sav, I believe that Christ descended into hell" (Exp. of the' Creed, Oxford, 1820, p. 376). Some of tlia divines of the Church of England held the Calvinistic view of this subject; others held the old theorj' of the descent of Christ into hell that he might triumph over Satan, as he had before triumphed over death and sin (Heylyn, Hist. Presb. p. 349 ; Bilson, Survey of Christ's Sufferinfjs, 1G04). Hugh Broughton (f l'612) taught conclusively that Hades is simply the place of departed souls, and that the rational soid of Christ, in his inter- mediate state, went into this locality. This has since been the generally received opinion in the Church of England ; so Horsley, " Christ descended to the invisible mansion of departed spirits, and to that part of it where the souls of the faithfid, when delivered from the biu-den of the flesh, are in joy and felicity. ... In that place he coidd not but find the souls that are in it in safe keep- ing; and, in some way or other, it cannot but be su])- posed he would hold conference with them ; and a par- ticular conference with one class might be the means, and certainly coidd be no obstruction, to a general com- miuiication with aU" (Sermons, vol. i, serm. xx). Dr. Joseph IMuenscher discusses the whole subject, histor- ically and critically, in an able article in the Bihliotheca Sacra, April, 1859, and concludes, as to the Protestant Episcopal Church, that her doctrine, as given in the Litiu-gy and Homilies, "can only be reconciled with that of the Creed and Articles by a liberal construction of the Creeds. And this has been done by the American Church herself in the rubric prefixed to the Creed, in which she substitutes the words ' he went into the place of departed spirits' as of equivalent import. The terms in which this substitute is couched are quite gen- eral and indefinite. By employing the verb icent in the place of descended, she virtually repudiates the hj-pothe- sis of a subterranean cavity as the receptacle of disem- bodied souls. And the phrase " place of departed spir- its" determines nothing as to an immediate locality, sep- arate and distinct from both heaven and hell. It merely afhrms that the soul of Jesus at his death went to its appropriate place in the invisible, spiritual world. Thus understood, the dogma of Christ's descent into hell is freed from all difficidty and mysterj', and made jilain to the comprehension of every mind, as well as consonant v.-ith the general tenor of Scriptiu-e. The residts to which we are brought by the preceding remarks are : 1. That J;he soid of man does not die or sleep Avith the body,''but, immediately after the dissolution of the lat- ter, passes into a separate, disembodied, conscious state, and into its appropriate place (so far as spirits may be supposed to occupy place), either of enjoyment or suf- fering—its heaven or its hell— according to the moral character which it may possess. 2. That there is no third intermediate place of spiritual existence ; no sub- terranean habitation of disembodied souls, either of pro- bation or of purgation ; no imaginary paradise in the under world where the souls of the pious are preserved in safe-keejjing ; no limbus patrum, no limbi/s infantum, no piu-gatory. 3. That our Saviour, according to the Creed, was perfect man a: well as perfect God, having a human soul no less than a Iniman body. 4. That -when crucified he died in reality, and not merely in appear- ance (syncope), since there took place an actual separa- tion of his soul and bodj'. 5. That the idle and unprof- itable question as to the object of Christ's descent into Hades is precluded ; a question which greatly perplexed the fathers, the schoolmen, and the Reformers, and led to the invention of many absiu-d and unscriptural theories." See Petavius, De Theol. Dogmat. (Antw. 1700), torn, ii, pt. ii, p. 196; Knapp, Theology, § 97; Dietelma>T, Hist, dogmates de descensu Christi ad infei-os (2d ed. Al- torf, 1762, 8vo) ; Hacker, Dissert, de descensu Christi ad
HELL
ITS
HELL
Inferos (Dresden, 1802) ; Pearson, On the Creed, art. v; Elhvardsi, llUfor:/ ,<f liideiiipihm, notes, p. 351, 377 ; Stu- art, K.ruiciic(d J\!i.<iii/.< oil I'lilure. PiiiiUldiaiit ; I'lump- trc, CitriM. mid Chrlsldiildni, p. 312; Huriict, Hardwick, Browne, On the Tliirtij-idue A rtkUit, art. iii ; Neale, Hist. of the I'ltritans (Harpers' ed.), i, 210; Kijnig, die Lthre von Christi llOlleiifahrt (YvaxM. 1S12) ; Biittchtr,* In- J'eris rebusque 2)ost mortem Jhtiin's, etc. ( 1 )ri'sden, 184G, 2 vols.); Glider, Lek?-e v. d. Krurln imni'i ( 'hiis/i ii. d. Tod- ten (Berlin, 1853); Gilder, in Urrzo-', J,', a/-Knci/Hop. vi, 178; Z,d^rhr[ftj7tr die Lutherisrhe Theoloe/ic, i8G8, No. 4; liihUnd lhjnmti,r!i, April, 1843, p. 470; Bibliotheca Savni, Xo\-. 1847, p. 708; lluidekoper, Christ's Mission to the Ciidu- World (Boston, 1854); Bp. Hobart, C« the ,St(ite "j'/hi Jhjxirted; Bethune, Lectures on the lleidel- henj Cutichisiii, lect. xix; Christian Examiner, 1, 401; Martensen, Christian JJof/matics, § 171; Dorner, Person of Christ (Index, s. v. Hell) ; Church Eei-ien; July, 1857 ; J\Iuenscher, in Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1859. For old nKinoyraplis on the subject, see Volbeding, Index Pro- f/ra/ii)iHitum, p. 67. See Intermediate State.