sen again and entered upon a spiritual
life. Thus Christ lives now after the spirit; that is, He is really
man, but has a spiritual body. Therefore we should not here question
how we may distinguish flesh and spirit from one another, but
understand that the body and flesh are spiritual, and the spirit is
in the body and with the body. For St. Peter does not say here that
the Holy Spirit has raised Christ up, but he speaks more generally;
as when I say the spirit, the flesh, I do not mean the Holy Spirit,
but that which is within us, that which the spirit impels, and that
which proceeds from the spirit. It follows, now:

V. 19-21. _By which same He also went and preached to the spirits in
prison, who aforetime were disobedient, when the long-suffering of
God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, in which
a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. Which now also
saves you through baptism, which is typical by it; not the putting
away of the filth of the flesh, but the union of a good conscience
with God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has ascended
to heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God,--and angels, and
principalities, and powers, are subject to Him._

This is a strange text, and a more obscure passage, perhaps, than any
other in the New Testament, for I do not certainly know what St.
Peter means. At first sight, the words import as though Christ had
preached to the spirits,--that is, the souls which were formerly
unbelieving at the time Noah was building the ark; but that I cannot
understand, I cannot even explain it. There has been no one hitherto
who has explained it. Yet if any one is disposed to maintain that
Christ, after that He had suffered on the Cross, descended to these
souls and preached to them, I will not dispute it. It might bear such
a rendering. But I am not confident that St. Peter would say this.
Yet the words may well be understood in this sense,--that our Lord,
after His ascension into heaven, came and preached in spirit, yet so
that His preaching was not in the body. For He speaks not with bodily
voice; He does no more what pertains to the natural functions of the
body. Whence it must also follow, as it seems, that inasmuch as He
preached to the spirits in that same spiritual body, such preaching
must also be a spiritual preaching, so that He did not go there in
body and with oral preaching. The text does not require us to
understand that He we