ed to death and the under world
on his own account. Consequently, when it is written that "he bore
our sins in his own body on the tree," that "he suffered for sins,
the just for the unjust," in order to give the words their clear,
full meaning it is not necessary to attribute to them the sense of
a vicarious sacrifice offered to quench the anger of God or to
furnish compensation for a broken commandment; but this sense,
namely, that although in his sinlessness he was exempt from death,
yet he "suffered for us," he voluntarily died, thus undergoing for
our sakes that which was to others the penalty of their sin. The
object of his dying was not to conciliate the alienated Father or
to adjust the unbalanced law: it was to descend into the realm of
the dead, heralding God's pardon to the captives, and to return
and rise into heaven, opening and showing to his disciples the way
thither. For, owing to his moral sinlessness, or to his delegated
omnipotence, if he were once in the abode of the dead, he must
return: nothing could keep him there. Epiphanius describes the
devil complaining, after Christ had burst through his nets and
dungeons, "Miserable me! what shall I do? I did not know God was
concealed in that body. The son of Mary has deceived me. I
imagined he was a mere man."7 In an apocryphal writing of very
early date, which shows some of the opinions abroad at that time,
one of the chief devils, after Christ had appeared in hell,
cleaving its grisly prisons from top to bottom and releasing the
captives, is represented upbraiding Satan in these terms: "O
prince of all evil, author of death, why didst thou crucify and
bring down to our regions a person righteous and sinless? Thereby
thou hast lost all the sinners of the world."8 Again, in an
ancient treatise on the Apostles' Creed, we read as follows: "In
the bait of Christ's flesh was secretly inserted the hook of his
divinity. This the devil knew not, but, supposing he must stay
when he was

5 See King's History of the Apostles' Creed, 3d ed., pp. 234-239.
"The purpose of Christ's descent was to undergo the laws of death,
pass through the whole experience of man, conquer the devil, break
the fetters of the captives, and fix a time for their
resurrection." To the same effect, old Hilary, Bishop of
Poictiers, in his commentary on Psalm cxxxviii., says, "It is a
law of human necessity that, the body being buried, the soul
should descend ad interos."

6 Ambrose, De Fi