ordingly, while remaining in one part of
hell, He wrought this effect in a measure in every part of hell, just
as while suffering in one part of the earth He delivered the whole
world by His Passion.

Reply Obj. 1: Christ, who is the Wisdom of God, penetrated to all the
lower parts of the earth, not passing through them locally with His
soul, but by spreading the effects of His power in a measure to them
all: yet so that He enlightened only the just: because the text
quoted continues: "And I will enlighten all that hope in the Lord."

Reply Obj. 2: Sorrow is twofold: one is the suffering of pain which
men endure for actual sin, according to Ps. 17:6: "The sorrows of
hell encompassed me." Another sorrow comes of hoped-for glory being
deferred, according to Prov. 13:12: "Hope that is deferred afflicteth
the soul": and such was the sorrow which the holy Fathers suffered in
hell, and Augustine refers to it in a sermon on the Passion, saying
that "they besought Christ with tearful entreaty." Now by descending
into hell Christ took away both sorrows, yet in different ways: for
He did away with the sorrows of pains by preserving souls from them,
just as a physician is said to free a man from sickness by warding it
off by means of physic. Likewise He removed the sorrows caused by
glory deferred, by bestowing glory.

Reply Obj. 3: These words of Peter are referred by some to Christ's
descent into hell: and they explain it in this sense: "Christ
preached to them who formerly were unbelievers, and who were shut up
in prison"--that is, in hell--"in spirit"--that is, by His soul.
Hence Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii): "As He evangelized them who
are upon the earth, so did He those who were in hell"; not in order
to convert unbelievers unto belief, but to put them to shame for
their unbelief, since preaching cannot be understood otherwise than
as the open manifesting of His Godhead, which was laid bare before
them in the lower regions by His descending in power into hell.

Augustine, however, furnishes a better exposition of the text in his
Epistle to Evodius quoted above, namely, that the preaching is not to
be referred to Christ's descent into hell, but to the operation of
His Godhead, to which He gave effect from the beginning of the world.
Consequently, the sense is, that "to those (spirits) that were in
prison"--that is, living in the mortal body, which is, as it were,
the soul's prison-house--"by the spirit" of His Godhe