de, etc., lib. iv. cap. 1, declares that "no one
ascended to heaven until Christ, by the pledge of his
resurrection, solved the chains of the under world and translated
the souls of the pious." Also Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, in his
fourth catechetical lecture, sect. 11, affirms "that Christ
descended into the under world to deliver those who, from Adam
downwards, had been imprisoned there."

7 In Assumptionem Christi.

8 Evan. Nicodemi, cap. xviii.

devoured, greedily swallowed the corpse, and the bolts of the
nether world were wrenched asunder, and the ensnared dragon
himself dragged from the abyss."9 Peter himself explicitly
declares, "It was not possible that he should be held by death."
Theodoret says, "Whoever denies the resurrection of Christ rejects
his death."10 If he died, he must needs rise again. And his
resurrection would demonstrate the forgiveness of sins, the
opening of heaven to men, showing that the bond which had bound in
despair the captives in the regions of death for so many voiceless
ages was at last broken. Accordingly, "God, having loosed the
chains of the under world, raised him up and set him at his own
right hand."11

And now the question, narrowed down to the smallest compass, is
this: What is the precise, real signification of the sacrificial
and other connected terms employed by Peter, those phrases which
now, by the intense associations of a long time, convey so strong
a Calvinistic sense to most readers? Peter says, "Ye know that ye
were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ." If there were
not so much indeterminateness of thought, so much unthinking
reception of traditional, confused impressions of Scripture texts,
it would be superfluous to observe that by the word blood here,
and in all parallel passages, is meant simply and literally death:
the mere blood, the mere shedding of the blood, of Christ, of
course, could have no virtue, no moral efficacy, of any sort. When
the infuriated Jews cried, "His blood be on us, and on our
children!" they meant, Let the responsibility of his death rest on
us. When the English historian says, "Sidney gave his blood for
the cause of civil liberty," the meaning is, he died for it. So,
no one will deny, whenever the New Testament speaks in any way of
redemption by the blood of the crucified Son of Man, the
unquestionable meaning is, redemption by his death. What, then,
does the phrase "redemption by the death of Christ" mean? Let it
be