there is a state intermediate between death and the resurrection in which believers are less glorious and exalted than they are to be after the second advent of Christ, but what is the nature of that state. Are believers after death with Christ? Do their souls immediately pass into glory ? or, are they in a dreamy, semi-conscious state, neither happy nor miserable, awaiting the resurrection of the body. That this latter view was for a long time prevalent in the Church may be inferred, (1.) From the fact that this was the view of the intermediate state commonly adopted by the Jews. (2.) It is the view attributed to the writers of the New Testament. (3.) It is the doctrine avowed by many of the patristic and mediaeval writers. (4.) There would otherwise be no ground for the opposition manifested to the doctrine of Protestants on this subject. Daille" says, "The doctrine that heaven shall not be opened till the second coming of Christ, — that during that time the souls of all men, with few exceptions, are shut up in the under-world, — was held by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine, Origen, Lactantius, Victorinus, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Theodoret, (Ecomenius, Are- tas, Prudentius, Theophylact, Bernard, and many others, as is
confessed by all This doctrine is literally held by the
whole Greek Church at the present day ; nor did any of the Lat- ins expressly deny any part of it until the Council of Florence, in the year of our Lord 1439." 1
Fliigge2 says in reference to the early fathers, that they " were not in doubt as to the fate of the soul when separated from the body until the resurrection, because they rested on the Jewish doctrine on that subject." Justin Martyr speaks in this way : 3 [^VH* 0 ^as f^ [,AUX"S] ™v zvaefi&v Iv Kpttrrovi 7roi x^PH* peveiv, ras Be dStKOvs kcu 7rov€pas ev x^P0Vh T°v **)* Kpwrecos CKScxo/tcvas XP°V0V TOTC>
that is, "I say, that the souls of the pious dwell in some better place, and ungodly and wicked souls in a worse place, thus await- ing the time of judgment."
The fathers say but little about Hades. Hippolytus, however, gives an account of it which is in substance as follows : 4 Hades, in which the souls of the righteous and unrighteous are detained, was left at the creation in a state of chaos, to which the light of
1 De Usu Patrum, 11. iv. ; edit. Geneva, 1656, pp. 290, 291.
2 Geschichte des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit, Auferstehung, Gericht und Vergeltung, von W. Fliigge, Universitatsprediger in Gottingen, ra. i. 3; Leipzig, 1799, vol. iii. part 1, p. 87.
ZDialogus cum Tryphone Judceo, 5; edit. Commelinus, Heidelberg, 1593, p. 172, 16-19. * Against Plato on the Cause of the Universe, (fragment): Ante-Nicene Christian Li- brary, Edinburgh, 1869, vol. ix. Hippolytus, vol. ii. p. 46 ff.
740 PART IV. Ch. L— STATE OF SOUL AFTER DEATH.
the sun never penetrates, but where perpetual darkness reigns. This place is the prison of souls, over which the angels keep watch. In Hades there is a furnace of unquenchable fire into which no one has yet been cast. It is reserved for the banish- ment of the wicked at the end of the world, when the righteous will be made citizens of an eternal kingdom. The good and the bad, although both in Hades, are not in the same part of it. They enter the under-world by the same gate. When this gate is passed, the guardian angels guide the souls of the departed different ways ; the righteous are guided to the right to a region full of light; the wicked are constrained to take the left hand path, leading to a region near the unquenchable fire. The good are free from all discomfort, and rejoice in expectation of their admission into heaven. The wicked are miserable in constant anticipation of their coming doom. An impassable gulf sepa- rates the abode of the righteous from that of the wicked. Here they remain until the resurrection, which he goes on to explain and defend.
Fliigge admits that there was no uniformity of representation on this subject in the early Church. The same general idea, however, is constantly reproduced ; the Latins agreeing sub- stantially with the Greeks. Tertullian represents the under- world as the general receptacle of departed spirits who retain their consciousness and activity. In this unseen world there are two divisions, both called " Inferi." " Nobis inferi non nuda cavositas, nee subdivalis aliqua mundi sentina creduntur : sed in fossa terrae et in alto vastitas, et in ipsis visceribus ejus abstrusa profunditas." x In this region there are two divisions ; the one called " infernum," by way of eminence, or Gehenna, " quae est ignis arcani subterraneus ad poenam thesaurus ; " the other is the bosom of Abraham or paradise, " divinae amcenitatis recipien- dis sanctorum spiritibus destinatum, materia [maceria] quadam igneae illius zonae a notitia orbis communis segregatum." 2 Ac- cording to this mode of representation, the intermediate state was itself a state of reward and punishment ; at other times, how- ever, this was denied ; all retribution being reserved to the day of judgment. In the early Greek Church, this latter view was the more prevalent ; 3 but later both the Greeks and Latins agreed in regarding the state of the righteous after death as far more favourable than that of the wicked.
i Tertullian, De Anima, 55; Works, edit. Basle, 1562, p. 685. * Tertullian, Apologeticus, 47 ; ut supra, p. 892. 3 Fliigge, in. i. 4; ui supra, pp. 215, 216.