He was buried, he descended into hell.
upon the cross. Now, albeit that the Majesty and worthiness of this matter in hand doth no small deal allure me unto it, and scarcely permits me to be led so soon from hence unto another discourse: yet, while I consider, that I here give only an instruction unto them that be the more ignorant, and no full teaching of the better learned
Christians: I will here stay myself, and take in hand to describe that state, which the body and the soul of Christ tasted of after his death.
He was buried, he descended into hell.
Two parts there are of man, assumed by the Word into the unity of the person; namely, the soul and the body, even as other men also consist of a soul and body: but those parts were separated and disjoined upon the cross. The body (as the evangelists do testify) was laid in the sepulcher, wherein it remained until the third day: which was the time appointed by the eternal Father, for the most happy resurrection of Christ. Of which mystery, when Paul treats in the epistle to the Romans, he says; that The faithful who are baptized into Christ Jesus, are buried in baptism. Which saying must thus be understood; namely, that we are so dead unto sin in Christ, that we have no more to do therewith; seeing Christ dying blotted out the same, so that it should not afterward be imputed unto us unto death.
Whereby, that as the bodies of them that be dead, are buried in the sepulcher; neither do appear from thence unto the eyes of men (not that they are not in the world, but because that which is corrupt and rotten in them is not seen:) even so our sin, perverse will, and naughty lust, howsoever they are destroyed by the cross of Christ, yet they cease not to remain in us, but are covered in the sight of God.
Not that God knows not of them sufficiently, unto whose eyes all things are discovered and manifest: but that he does mercifully dissemble them, does not revenge, nor yet is so angry that he brings
death upon us by reason of them. Wherefore the flesh of Christ, being buried after his death, signified that our sin is as it were buried before the just tribunal seat of God. It signified also, that the power of the law is broken. Finally, it betokened, that the old shadows and ceremonies of the law are utterly abolished.
As concerning the very soul itself, immediately after that it departed from the body; it remained not idle, but it descended into the lower parts. Which words declare nothing else, but that it entered into the same state, which the rest of the souls separated from the bodies have experience of; the which are either chosen into the fellowship of saints, or else are thrust out into everlasting destruction, with the spirits of them that be damned. And assuredly, both the one and the other; as well the society of the godly spirits, as also of them that should be damned, felt the presence of the soul of Christ. For the spirits of the faithful (who as Christ says in Luke, while he makes mention of that unhappy rich man, and of most happy Lazarus) rested in a very quiet place, which there is aptly called The bosom of Abraham, that they being all endued with one faith of that holy patriarch, should wait for salvation, through Christ, which there was named from Abraham. Those spirits (I say) rejoiced with great consolation, and gave thanks unto the excellent God, who had delivered them by the hand of the mediator; and because he had performed that thing, which he so long before had promised. Also the other spirits, which were appointed to damnation, felt the coming of the soul of Christ. For (as we read in the first epistle of Peter, the third chapter) To them the spirit of Christ preached.
Which may be understood after this sort; namely, that he might reprove them for their obstinacy and unbelief, wherein they were hardened against the word of God, and against the godly admonitions, which ever among were propounded unto them, while they yet lived: or else, that he even then showed unto them, that