terror. For if the judgment itself shall be a cause of joy to some, assuredly this preaching was not a subject of dread to all. The author of the Adumbrations, which are assigned to Clement of Alexandria and to Cassiodorus, says, They saw not His form , hut heard the sound of His voice, Calvin , in his Institutes, 2d Book, ch. xvi. 9, says, For the context also leads to this conclusion , that the faithful , who had died before that time , were sharers of the same grace with us : because it enhances the power of His death from this cir- cumstance^ that it penetrated even to the dead ; while the souls of the righteous obtained an immediate view of that visitation, which they had anxiously expected , on the contrary , it was more plainly revealed to the lost, that they are altogether excluded from salvation. And though Peter does not speak with such distinctness , it must not thus be understood as though he mixed together the righteous and the wicked without any difference, but he only wishes to teach , that a perception of the death of Christ was common to both.
20. ’ Acrs/^tfaff/, who had been unbelieving) who in their life had not believed the patriarchs, when they admonished them in the name of God. — non, sometime) This sometime (used in ver. 5 also with reference to a long time [ago]), and this long-suffering , of which he speaks immediately after, have reference to all ages of the Old Testament previously to the death of Christ. It is called forbear- ance, Bom. iii. 26. Long-suffering preceded the first coining of Christ, as here shown, and His second coming, 2 Pet. iii. 9, note. — on, when) The weak reading, or/, is rightly refuted by Wolf. A certain edition, which has on, is very corrupt, even in this very word. Some copies have on, according to Erasmus, even in his first edition ; but the Basileensis II. is the only one which is found, from which Erasmus rarely deviated, though he did in this instance, and with reason. — a<rs£e de^zro1) Other copies have dna^ £de% sro; but very few have this reading, e being first corrupted into a, as is often the case ; nor does the simple verb ds%e<r0cu agree with the passage. See App. Crit. on this place. ’ Ane^zds^sro, that is, God continued waiting, that men might believe. But there is greater force in the Greek double compound : He continued ivaiting on, until there wTas an end of His waiting, in the death of the men. — £v, in) Understand oTov : that is, for instance [to wit], in the days of Noah. The most re- markable species is subjoined to the genus, for these reasons : 1) On no occasion did a greater number perish together than at the
1 So ABC Vulg. Orig. 2,553 d and 4,135a. Rec. Text has «7roc| e|s S^sro, with no authority except Orig. 4,135a in a MS.