The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Peter — Section 142

that the Lord's purpose was to deliver them unbelieving who lived in the days of Noah, and to save them (eztrahere eos et sal-vare whose spirit.a, i.e. souls, had been shut up in eos). Tertullian says that the Lord de- the flesh and in the dttrkness of iguomnoe, scended into the lower parts of the earth, as in a prison [comp. 'Paradise Lost,' xi. to make the patriarchs partakers of himself 723]. Christ proaohed to them, not in the (compol.es sui; • De Anima,' o. 55). Clement flesh, inasmuch wi he was not yet iuco.rne.te, of Alexandria quotes Hermas as saying but in the spirit, i.e. according to his Divine that "the apostles and teachers who had nature (secundum divinitatem)." But this preached the Name of the Son of God and interpretation does not satisfy St. Peter's bad fallen asleep, preached by hie power words. The hypothesis that Christ pree.ohed and faith to those who bad fallen asleep through the instrumentality of Noah doe1 before them" (' Strom.,' ii. 9). "And then," not adequately represent the participle Bishop Pearson, from whose notes on the 1rop,v6•ls ; the word </)uA<1,d, cannot be to.ken Creed these quotations are taken, continues, metaphorically of the flesh in which the "Clement supplies that authority with a soul is confined. If, with Beza, we under- reason of his own, that as the apostles stand it as meaning "who are now in were to imitate Christ while they lived, so prison," we esoape one difficulty, but did they also imitate him after death, and another is introduced ; for it is surely forced therefore preached to the souls in Hades, and unnatural to make the time of the verb as Christ did before them." The earliest and that of the dative clause different. The writers do not seem to have thought that words Iv </)uAa.,qi must describe the condition any change in the condition of the dead was of the spirits at the time of the Saviour's produced by Christ's descent into Hades. preaching. Some commento.tors, as Socinue The Lord announced the gospel to the and Grotius, refer St. Peter's words to the dead ; the departed saints rejoiced to hear preaching of Christ through the apostles. the glad tidings, as now the angels rejoice These writers understand ,puAa."~ of the over each repentant sinner. Origen, in his prison of the body, or the prison of sin; and second homily on 1 Kings, taught that the explain St. Peter as meaning that Christ Lord, descending into Hades, brought the preached through the apostles to the Jews souls of the holy dead, the patriarchs and who were under the yoke of the Law, and to prophets, out of Hades into Paradise; no the Gentiles who lay under the power of souls coul<l pass the flaming sword till he the devil; and they regard the disobedient had led the way ; but now, through his in the time of Noah as a sample of sinners grace and power, the blessed dead wllo die in any age. But this interpretation is in the Lord enter at once into the rest of altogether arbitrary, and cannot be recon- Pare.dise--not yet heaven, but an inter- ciled with the apostle's words. Other mediate place of rest, far better than that views e.re-tlrnt our Lord descended into from which the saints of the old covenant hell to triumph over Satan (on which see were delivered. In this view Origen we.a Pearson on the Creed, art. v.); that his followed by many of the later Fathers. pree.ching was e. concio damnatoria-a.n But St. Peter says nothing of any preach- announcement of condemnation, not of Ing to departed saints. Christ "went and salvation (which is disproved by oh. iv. 6); preached," he says," unto the spirits in prison, that the spirits in prison were holy souls which sometime were disobedient." Hence waiting for Christ, the prison being Jerome, Ambrose, A ngustine, and others (e.ccording to Calvin) "specula, sive ipse were led to suppose that the Lord not only excubandi e.ctus ; " that they were heathens, raised the holy dead to a higher state of who lived according to their light, but in blessedness, but preached also to the dis- idolatry. We may mention, in conclusion, obedient, and that some of these believed, the monstrous explanation of the heretic and were by his grace delivered from Me.rcion, that they were those who in the "prison." Some few, as Cyril of Alexan- Old Testament are called ungodly, but were dria, held that the Lord spoiled the house really better than those whom tho Old of the strong man armed (ueuuA71rn 7w11 Te~tawent regards as saints. .,,v,uµ.d.n,w o ~671s), and released all his Ver. 21.-The like figure wherennto even captives. This Augustine reckoned as a baptism doth also now save ns. The reading heresy. But in his epistle to Euodius (Ep. of the Textus Receptus rj, represented by 99 and 164) Augustine, much exercised (as " whereunto," is without authority ; all the he says, "vehementissime commotus ") by uncial manuscripts have II, "which," in the the difficulties of tile question, propounded nominative caso. The oldest manuscripts the interpretation which became general also read "you" instead of "us." The in the W estem Church, being adopted by antecedent of the relative 3 must be the Bede, Thomas Aquinas, De Lym, and later word immediately preceding, /5lia.7os, wo.ter; l,y Beza, Hammond, Leighton, Pearson, etc. the word "baptism" is added in apposition, " Tile spirits in prison," he says, "are the to define more clearly the apostle's meaning; oil. m. 1-22.] THE FIRST EPISTLE GENERAL OF PETE:R. 137