e man the hope of a heavenly
immortality."34 Hilary of Poictiers says, "Christ went down into
Hades for two reasons: first, to fulfil the law imposed on mankind
that every soul on leaving the body shall descend into the under
world, and, secondly, to preach the Christian religion to the
dead."35 Chrysostom writes, "When the Son of God cometh, the earth
shall burst open, and all the men that ever were born, from Adam's
birth up to that day, shall rise up out of the earth."36 Irenaus
testifies, "I have heard from a certain presbyter, who heard it
from those who had seen the apostles and received their
instructions, that Christ descended into the under world, and
preached the gospel and his own advent to the souls there, and
remitted the sins of those who believed on him."37 Eusebius
records that, "after the ascension of Jesus, Thomas sent Thaddeus,
one of the Seventy, to Abgarus, King of Edessa. This disciple told
the king how that Jesus, having been crucified, descended into the
under world, and burst the bars which had never before been
broken, and rose again, and also raised with himself the dead that
had slept for ages; and how he descended alone, but ascended with
a great multitude to his Father; and how he was about to come
again to judge the living and the dead."38 Finally, we cite the
following undeniable statement from Daille's famous work on the
"Right Use of the Fathers:" "That heaven shall not be opened till
the second coming of Christ and the day of judgment, that during
this time the souls of all men, with a few exceptions, are shut up
in the under world, was held by Justin Martyr, Irenaus,
Tertullian, Augustine, Origen, Lactantius, Victorinus, Ambrose,
Chrysostom, Theodoret, OEcumenius, Aretas, Prudentius,
Theophylact, Bernard,

32 De Civitate Dei, lib. xx. cap. 15.

33 In Resurrectionem Christi.

34 Divin. Instit. lib. iv. cap. 19, 20.

35 Hilary in Ps. cxviii. et cxix.

36 Homil. in Rom. viii. 25.

37 Adv. Hares. lib. iv. sect. 45.

38 Ecc. Hist. lib. i. cap. 13.

and many others, as is confessed by all. This doctrine is
literally held by the whole Greek Church at the present day. Nor
did any of the Latins expressly deny any part of it until the
Council of Florence, in the year of our Lord 1439."39

In view of these quotations, and of volumes of similar ones which
might be adduced, we submit to the candid reader that the meaning
most probably in the mind of the writer of the Apocalypse wh