to be too ready to condemn me for presuming to meddle with matters which may seem to lie in the exclusive province of churchmen, for are we not all members of the same spiritual body? and ought we not, therefore, to be in some measure, "fellow-labourers with God"* in the edification of Christ's Church upon earth?

* 1 Cor. iii. 9.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.

WHEN Christ, at His crucifixion, commended His spirit into His Father's hands, are we at liberty to doubt that the spirit, or human soul of Jesus, on leaving the body returned to His Father, to the God who gave it? How, then, can we reconcile this undeniable fact with the belief of its descent into hell, or into any fancied region where departed spirits are represented, most unscripturally as I think, to be in a state of consciousness, waiting for the day of judgment?

No one, it is to be hoped, will for a moment entertain the idle thought, not to use a harsher term, that whilst the human soul of Christ returned into the Father's hands, He, the second Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, did, as God, visit the supposed region of departed souls. Christ died as man, but ever lives as God. His human body rose again, not merely by the power of the Father, but by His own inherent power, jointly with that of the Father and of the Holy Ghost. The words of the Nicene Creed give no handle to such heresy as the above: it is therein simply said, "Christ died and was buried." In adding, "He descended into hell," the framers of such an

unwarrantable clause subjected themselves to the plain question, Who descended into hell? Not the soul of Jesus, for that had gone to the Father. What then? Why, there remains neither soul to go, nor place to go to.

To give consistency to the interpolated clause in the Creed, not only must the human soul of Christ, accompanied by that of his fellow-sufferer on the cross, have visited the supposed abode of disembodied spirits, but we must further believe that what is called hell in the Creed corresponds with what our Saviour calls Paradise, otherwise His soul must have been in hell and in paradise at the same time.

It is difficult for any one, imbued with a reverential awe of these matters, to enter upon the consideration of them with becoming diffidence and composure. But where there is no escaping from the deep conviction of error, in a clause introduced into the primitive creed of our church, it becomes an imperative duty to show the grounds of that conviction by nothing short of demonstration; for so only can the conscience be set at liberty. I never repeat the Apostles' Creed after the minister without a mental reservation in regard to this clause. it that I have seen is, that hell here means nothing more than the grave; but, whilst the gravamen of the charge is thus removed, the stigma that the clause is spurious remains; and when we call to mind the evasive character of that explanation, which too subtle a comment supplies, we surely ought not to lose sight of the popular meaning which is attached to the word hell.

The best defence of

It has been well said that truth is simple, error multiform; and strange it is to find that no less men than

Jeremy Taylor and Bishop Horsley have both vindicated the integrity of the clause in question, by making the word hell to mean the region of departed spirits generally.

"Our beloved Lord" (these are the words of the learned and pious Jeremy Taylor) "descended into hell, saith the Creed of the Apostles, from the sermon of St. Peter, as he from the words of David; that is, into the state of separation and common receptacle of spirits, according to the style of Scripture. But the name of hell," he proceeds to say, "is no where in Scripture an appellative of the kingdom of Christ, of the place of final and supreme glory. But concerning the verification of our Lord's promise to the beatified thief, and his own state of separation, we must acquire what light we can from Scripture, and what we can from the doctrine of the primitive church. St. Paul had two great revelations; he was rapt up into paradise, and he was rapt up into the third heaven; and these he calls visions and revelations; not one, but divers. For paradise is distinguished from the heaven of the blessed, being itself a receptacle of holy souls, made illustrious with visitation of angels, and happy by being a repository of such spirits, who at the day of judgment shall go forth into eternal glory. In the interim, Christ hath trod all the paths before us; and this also we must pass through to arrive at the courts of heaven. Justin Martyr said it was the doctrine of heretical persons, to say that the souls of the blessed, instantly upon the separation from their bodies, enter into the highest heaven. And Irenæus makes heaven and the immediate receptacle of souls to be distinct places; both blessed, but hugely differing in degrees. Tertullian is dogmatical in the

assertion, that till the voice of the great archangel be heard, and as long as Christ sits at the right hand of His Father, making intercession for the church, so long. blessed souls must expect the assembling of their brethren, the great congregation of the church, that they may all pass from their outward courts into the inner tabernacle, the holy of holies, to the throne of God. And as it is certain that no soul could enter into glory before our Lord entered, by whom we hope to have access; so it is most agreeable to the proportion of the mysteries of our redemption, that we believe the entrance into glory to have been made by our Lord at His glorious ascension ; and that His soul went not thither before then, to come back again, to be contracted into the span of humanity, and dwell forty days in his body upon earth. But that he should return from paradise, that is, from the common receptacle of departed spirits who died in the love of God, to earth again, had in it no lessening of His condition, since Himself in mercy called back Lazarus from thence; and some others also returned to live a life of grace, which in all senses is less than the least of glories."*

After thus involving himself in a mass of difficulties respecting the place to which the soul of our Saviour went between death and the resurrection, and endeavouring to identify the word hell with paradise, he proceeds to confirm this notion by showing that paradise is not the region of final glory, the third heaven; not perceiving that, agreeably with the terms of St. Paul's vision, the descent of the soul into any region is as inconsistent with

• Life of Christ, fol. x. Edit. Ad. Sect. xvi. 398.