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| The Christian Idea of the Position of Hades; The Blessedness of Paradise Immediately After Death. The Privilege of the Martyrs.
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Chapter LV.—The
Christian Idea of the Position of Hades; The Blessedness of Paradise
Immediately After Death. The Privilege of the Martyrs.
By ourselves the lower regions (of Hades) are not
supposed to be a bare cavity, nor some subterranean sewer of the world,
but a vast deep space in the interior of the earth, and a concealed
recess in its very bowels; inasmuch as we read that Christ in His death
spent three days in the heart of the earth,1799
that is, in the secret inner recess which is hidden in the earth, and
enclosed by the earth, and superimposed on the abysmal depths which lie
still lower down. Now although Christ is God, yet, being also man,
“He died according to the Scriptures,”1800
and “according to the same Scriptures
was buried.”1801
With the same law
of His being He fully complied, by remaining in Hades in the form and
condition of a dead man; nor did He ascend into the heights of heaven
before descending into the lower parts of the earth, that He might
there make the patriarchs and prophets partakers of Himself.1802
(This being the case), you must suppose
Hades to be a subterranean region, and keep at arm’s length those
who are too proud to believe that the souls of the faithful deserve a
place in the lower regions.1803
| 1803 See Irenæus,
adv. Hæres. v. [Vol. I. p. 566, this Series.] | These persons, who
are “servants above their Lord, and disciples above their
Master,”1804
would no doubt
spurn to receive the comfort of the resurrection, if they must expect
it in Abraham’s bosom. But it was for this purpose, say they,
that Christ descended into hell, that we might not ourselves have to
descend thither. Well, then, what difference is there between heathens
and Christians, if the same prison awaits them all when dead? How,
indeed, shall the soul mount up to heaven, where Christ is already
sitting at the Father’s right hand, when as yet the
archangel’s trumpet has not been heard by the command of
God,1805
| 1805 1 Cor. xv. 52 and 1 Thess. iv. 16. | —when as yet those whom the coming of
the Lord is to find on the earth, have not been caught up into the air
to meet Him at His coming,1806
in company with the
dead in Christ, who shall be the first to arise?1807
To no one is heaven opened; the earth is
still safe for him, I would not say it is shut against him. When the
world, indeed, shall pass away, then the kingdom of heaven shall be
opened. Shall we then have to sleep high up in ether, with the
boy-loving worthies of Plato; or in the air with Arius; or around the
moon with the Endymions of the Stoics? No, but in Paradise, you tell
me, whither already the patriarchs and prophets have removed from Hades
in the retinue of the Lord’s resurrection. How is it, then, that
the region of Paradise, which as revealed to John in the Spirit lay
under the altar,1808
displays no other
souls as in it besides the souls of the martyrs? How is it that the
most heroic martyr Perpetua on the day of her passion saw only her
fellow-martyrs there, in the revelation which she received of Paradise,
if it were not that the sword which guarded the entrance permitted none
to go in thereat, except those who had died in Christ and not in Adam?
A new death for God, even the extraordinary one for Christ, is admitted
into the reception-room of mortality, specially altered and adapted to
receive the new-comer. Observe, then, the difference between a heathen
and a Christian in their death: if you have to lay down your life for
God, as the Comforter1809
counsels, it is not
in gentle fevers and on soft beds, but in the sharp pains of martyrdom:
you must take up the cross and bear it after your Master, as He has
Himself instructed you.1810
The sole key to
unlock Paradise is your own life’s blood.1811
| 1811 The souls of the
martyrs were, according to Tertullian, at once removed to Paradise (Bp.
Kaye, p. 249). |
You have a treatise by us,1812
| 1812 De
Paradiso. [Compare, p. 216, note 9,
supra.] | (on Paradise), in
which we have established the position that every soul is detained in
safe keeping in Hades until the day of the Lord.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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