as should make, in this case, even his
great name have little or no weight. He firmly held, as revealed
and unquestionable truth,2 the whole doctrine which we maintain is
implied in the present passage; but he was so perplexed by certain
difficult queries3 as to locality and method and circumstance,
addressed to him with reference to this text, that he, waveringly,
and at last, gave it an allegorical interpretation. His exegesis
is not only arbitrary and opposed to the catholic doctrine of the
Church; it is also so far fetched and forced as to be destitute of

1 See, for example, Clem. Alex. Stromata, lib. vi.; Cyprian, Test.
adv. Judaos, lib. ii. cap. 27, Lactantius, Divin. Instit. lib.
vii. cap. 20.

2 Epist. XCIX.

3 Ibid.

plausibility. He says the spirits in prison may be the souls of
men confined in their bodies here in this life, to preach to whom
Christ came from heaven. But the careful reader will observe that
Peter speaks as if the spirits were collected and kept in one
common custody, refers to the spirits of a generation long ago
departed to the dead, and represents the preaching as taking place
in the interval between Christ's death and his resurrection. A
glance from the eighteenth to the twenty second verse inclusive
shows indisputably that the order of events narrated by the
apostle is this: First, Christ was put to death in the flesh,
suffering for sins, the just for the unjust; secondly, he was
quickened in the spirit; thirdly, he went and preached to the
spirits in prison; fourthly, he rose from the dead; fifthly, he
ascended into heaven. How is it possible for any one to doubt that
the text under consideration teaches his subterranean mission
during the period of his bodily burial?

In the exposition of the Apostles' Creed put forth by the Church
of England under Edward VI., this text in Peter was referred to as
an authoritative proof of the article on Christ's descent into the
under world; and when, some years later, thatreference was
stricken out, notoriously it was not because the Episcopal rulers
were convinced of a mistake, but because they had become afraid of
the associated Romish doctrine of purgatory.

If Peter believed as he undoubtedly did that Christ after his
crucifixion descended to the place of departed spirits, what did
he suppose was the object of that descent? Calvin's theory was
that he went into hell in order that he might there suffer
vicariously the accumulated agon