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ESSAY
?OVARY) THE
SECT-.
fr'
dead,
of
which
the
apostle
speaks in the sixth
verse:
This,
I
say, is
the most natural and
obvious
sense;
other.
paraphrases
of
the
words seem
strained and unna-
tural.
I
'Thess:
v.
10.
" Jesus
Christ,
who
died for
us,
that,
whether
we
wake or
sleep, we
should
live
together with
bin]."
Sleep
is
the
death
of
good
men,
in
the
language
©f
the apostle, in
chapter
iv.
verses 13-
-15.
and sleep,
in
this verse, can
neither
signify
natural
sleep, as verse
7.
nor
spiritual
sloth,
as
verse
6.
therefore,
it must
signify:
death
here.
Now
they, who
are
asleep
in Christ,
in
this
sense, do still live
together
with him in
their
souls,
and
shall
live with him
in
their
bodies
also,
when
raised from
the
dead.
This
exposition arises
near
to
a
certainty
of
evidence.
1
Pet.
iii.
'_8
-20.
"
Christ
was-put to death in
the
flesh,
but quickened
by
the Spirit,
by which also
he
went
and
preached unto the spirits
in prison;
which
sometime
were disobedient,
when
once the long
-
suffering
of God
waited
in-the
days
of Noah."
I
confess this is a
text
that
has
much puzzled
interpreters,
in
what
sense
Christ
may
be
said to
go
and preach to those
ancient
rebels,
who were
destroyed
by the
flood; whether
he
didit
by
his
Spirit
working
in
Noah; the preacher
of
righteousness,
in
these
days;
or whether
in
the three
days in which
the
body
of Christ
lay dead,
his soul
visited the spirits
of
those rebels,
-in
their separate state
-of
imprisonment,
on
which
some
ground
the notion,
of
his dese.ent
into
hell
But, Iet this be
determined
as
it
will,
the most clear and
easy.senseof
the apostle,
when-
he -speaks
of
_the
spirits
in prison,
is,
that
the souls
of
those rebels,
after
their-
bodies
were
destroyed
by
the flood, were reserved
in
pri-
son
for some special
and futíire'design
:
And this
is
very
parallel
to
the
present circumstances
of
fallen angels in
Jude,
verse
G.
"
The
angels,
that
kept not their
first
ea-
Ole,
he
bath
reserved
in
everlasting chains, under
dark-
ness;
unto
the
judgment
of the great day
:"
And
why
may
not
the spirits
of
men
be
as
well
kept,
in
such a
prison,
as
aígelic
spirits
?
Jude,
verse
7.
"
Sodom
and
,Gomorrah
are
set
forth
#'or
an example,
suffering
the vengeance
of
.
eternal,
fire."
It
is
evident,
that
the
material
fire,
which
destroyed
So-
dom
and Gomorrah,
was
not
eternal;
for
a
great lake