pleasures of sin, and having the vanities of the world removed from our eyes: the immersion in baptism was a kind of burial, and its being done thrice (according to primitive use) corresponded (as the ancients suppose) to our Saviour's lying three days in the grave : Τὸ γὰρ καταδύσαι τὸ παιδίον ἐν τῇ κολυμβήθιᾳ τρίτον, καὶ ἀναστήσαι, τοῦτο δηλοῖ τὸν θάνατον, καὶ τὴν τριήμερον ἀνάστασιν τοῦ Χριστοῦ : that the child doth enter thrice into the font, and rises up again; this represents the death and resurrection after three days of Christ, saith Athanasius; and,— Illa tertio repetita demersio typum dominicæ exprimit sepulturæ, per quam Christo consepulti estis in baptismo; that demersion thrice repeated expresses a type of our Lord's burial, as by which we are together buried with Christ, in baptism, saith St. Augustin. It also doth countenance and commend unto us those seemly respects (those offices of humanity) which all civil people have consented to perform towards the bodies of our brethren departed from us; in decently laying up their remainders; securing them from offence and disgrace; showing by our best regard to what is left of them the goodwill we bare them living, the good hope we have of them dead; as expecting to recover that depositum so carefully laid up by us. see our Saviour was not unconcerned herein; and did commend to the everlasting esteem of posterity the pious respect of that good woman, who spent the precious ointment on him, as having reserved it for his burial. As for the manner of our Saviour's burial; that his body was by Pilate's grant, on the petition of an honorable counsellor, rescued from the cross, (where, according to the rigor of the Roman law, it was to abide till its consumption,) that no farther ignominy or injury should be offered unto him, after he had fully satisfied the will and justice of God, in undergoing such extremities of pain and disgrace for our redemption: that another good ruler, well affected to his person and doctrine, had prepared and did bring a plentiful and precious mixture of spices, wherewith, (according to the manner of the Jews towards persons of wealth and respect,) for decency and convenience, (to preserve the dead bodies from noisome savor, and to prevent sudden corruption,) to anoint his body: that his body was wrapped up in fine linen clothes, and laid in a new fair tomb, hewed out of a rock, (or

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stony ground,) was thence inclosed, a great stone being rolled on the entrance thereof; (God thus ordering it, that all befitting honor should be done to that sacred body, which had borne so much for us, and served God so well; that the glorious temple of the divinity should not be profaned or polluted in any manner unseemly; that the grand miracle of raising our Saviour to life should come off with most advantage.) These things, plainly described in the gospel, might afford matter of profitable observation and discourse; but I cannot well insist on them; but proceed.

'He descended into hell,' kareλ@óvra eis ädov. This article, (or point of doctrine,) as was before noted, is of a later standing in the Creed; and doth not appear to have had place in any of the most ancient ones, public or private, (excepting that of Aquileia, into which also perhaps it might have come not long before Ruffinus's time;) and the meaning thereof hath always (both in more ancient times among the fathers, and in the middle times afterwards among the schoolmen, and lately among modern writers) been much debated, having given occasion to many prolix and accurate discourses: to recite the different opinions and explications thereof, with the reasons produced to maintain or disprove them, were a matter of greater pain and time than I can afford; and to decide the controversies about it, a matter of greater difficulty than I could hope to achieve. I could therefore, (both on these accounts, as also because I chose to insist rather on matters more clear it their nature, and practical in consequence ;) I could therefore I say, willingly wave this obscure and perplexed subject; ye however, to comply somewhat with expectation, I shall toucl briefly on some things seeming conducible to the clearing o ending of the controversies hereabout.

Now whereas there may be a threefold inquiry, either con cerning the meaning of the words (here set down) intended by those who inserted them; or concerning the most proper signi fication of the words themselves; or concerning the meaning they are with truth capable of in the case to which they here are applied;

1. The first I resolve (or rather remove) by saying, that it seems needless and endless to dispute what meaning they

(which placed these words here) did intend; since, 1. It is possible, (and might be declared so by many like instances,) and perhaps not unlikely, that they might both themselves on probable grounds believe, and for plausible ends propound to the belief of others, this proposition, without apprehending any distinct sense thereof; as we believe all the Scriptures, and commend them to the faith of others, without understanding the sense of many passages therein and since, 2. perhaps they might by them intend some notion not certain, or not true, following some conceits then prevalent, but not built on any sure foundations: and since, 3. to speak roundly, their bare authority, whoever they were, (for that doth not appear,) could not be such as to oblige us to be of their minds, whatever they did mean or intend. We may owe much reverence, but no intire credence to their opinions. Yet, 4. if I were bound to speak my thought, I must confess, supposing they had any distinct meaning, they did mean to say that our Saviour's soul did, by a true and proper kind of motion, descend into the regions infernal, or beneath the earth; where they conceived the souls of men were detained: for this appears to have been the more general and current opinion of those times, which it is probable they did comply with herein, whencesoever fetched, however grounded.

As to the second inquiry, concerning the signification of the words, what may be meant by 'he descended;' whether our Saviour himself, according to his humanity, or his soul, or his body, called he by synecdoche: what by descended ;' whether, (to omit that sense, which makes the whole sentence an allegory, denoting the sufferance of infernal or hellish pains and sorrows, as too wide from the purpose;) whether, I say, by descending may be signified a proper local motion toward such. a term, or an action so called in respect to some such motion. accompanying it; or a virtual motion by power and efficacy in places below: what by 'hell;' whether a state of being, or a place; if a place, whether that where bodies are reposed, or that to which souls do go; and if a place of souls, whether the place of good and happy souls, or that of bad and miserable ones; or indifferently and in common, of both those; for such a manifold ambiguity these words have, (or are made to have ;)

and each of these senses are embraced and contended for: I shall not examine any of them, nor farther meddle in the matter, than by saying,

1. That the Hebrew word sheol (on the true notion of which the sense of the word hell in this place is confessed to depend) doth seem originally, most properly, and most frequently (perhaps constantly, except when it is translated, as all words sometimes are, to a figurative use) to design the whole region protended downward from the surface of the earth to a depth (according to the vulgar opinion, as it seems, of all ancient times over the world) indefinite and inconceivable; vastly capacious in extension, very darksome, desolate, and dungeonlike in quality, (whence it is also styled frequently the pit, the abyss, the darkness, the depths of the earth, &c.) I need not labor much to confirm the truth of this notion, since it is obvious that this sheol (when most absolutely and properly taken, the circumstances of the discourse implying so much) is commonly opposed to heaven, not only in situation, but in dimen sion and distance; as when Job, speaking of the unsearchableness of the divine perfections, saith, 'It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” and the prophet Amos; Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up into heaven, thence will I bring them down.' I say farther,

2. Because the bodies (that is, the visible remainders) of men dying do naturally fall down, or are put into the bosom of this pit, (which is therefore an universal grave and receptacle of them,) therefore to die is frequently termed karaßaírei eis ᾅδου, οι κατάγεσθαι εἰς ᾅδου, to descend, or to be brought down into this hell; which happening unto all men without exception, (for, as the psalmist says, there is no man that shall deliver his soul (or life, or himself,) from the hand (or from the clutches,) of this all-grasping hell,) therefore it is attributed promiscuously to all men, to good and bad alike; I will go down,' saith good Jacob, unto the grave' (to sheol, this common grave of mankind, karaẞhooμai eis ädov) 'unto my son mourning :' and so frequently of others. Whence this hell is apt figuratively to be put for, and signify equivalently with, death itself, (it is once by the LXX. so translated, and by St. Peter, it

seems, after them,) or for the law, condition, and state thereof. I say farther,

3. That this word seems not in the ancient use to signify the place whither men's souls do go, or where they abide; for that,

1. It can hardly be made appear that the ancient Hebrews either had any name appropriate to the place of souls, or did conceive distinctly which way they went; otherwise than that, as the preacher speaks, they returned unto God who gave them;' that they abode in God's hand, (especially the souls of the just, as we have it in Wisdom; The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them,' &c.) And for that,

2. It is probable they did rather conceive the souls of men, when they died, did go upward than downward; as the same preacher intimates, differencing the spirit of man dying from the soul of beasts; that with its body descending, this ascending, as it were, unto God, to be disposed according to his pleasure and justice. And by Enoch's being taken unto God, (whose special residence is expressed to be in heaven above,) and by Elias's translation upward into heaven, (as it is in the history,) it seems they might rather suppose the souls of the righteous to ascend, than to be conveyed downward into subterraneous caverns; those μvxoì, that ẞółpos dov, (those closets, that deep pit of hell, as the son of Sirach and the book of Wisdom dò call them ;) to ascend, I say, into consortship and society with the blessed angels, who are described to attend on God's throne in heaven, to the family of God in heaven, to that heavenly country, which they are said to desire earnestly, the heavenly Jerusalem. I add,

3. That, if those ancients had by sheol meant the receptacle or mansion of souls, it is not likely they would have used such expressions; 'The grave (sheol) cannot praise thee; death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;' so Hezekiah: 'In death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave (in sheol again) who shall give thee thanks;' so David: and the preacher more fully; There is no work, nor device, nor knowlege, nor wisdom in the grave, (in sheol,) whither thou goest:' (it were much he