But we may proceed to shew, that their claims are inconsistent with the so-much-boasted "Voluntary Principle." There is no doubt that the government intends to substitute for Church-rates a fixed sum from the general taxation. Against this the Dissenters loudly complain, as a violation of the "Voluntary Principle." But are not the annual grants for "the Regium Donum," and for the maintenance of the Popish establishment of Maynooth, equally violations of this principle? Justice and fair dealing surely demand that Irish Presbyterianism, and Irish Popery, should be equally excluded from a maintenance out of the public revenues, as well as the Established Church, if the "Voluntary Principle" is to be at all regarded.

If, Sir, on these grounds the Dissenters are determined to enforce their claims, let them be consistent. In order to be so, let them make a public avowal, that from the day in which the new Marriage and Registration Acts come into operation, no Dissenter shall participate in the rites of the Established Church, or shall attempt to enforce them by legal means; but, on the contrary, they will use every effort to endeavour to obtain the consent of the Legislature to exempt the Clergy from all civil penalties, for a refusal of these rites. Let them join Churchmen in procuring an immunity from the desecration of our churches by public meetings; let them provide registration and places of burial for their own people; let them join in withholding the grants of public money to the Irish Papists and Presbyterians; and, above all, let them enter a protest against Dissenters interfering with the internal regulations of the Church of England. This latter is a thing of vast importance; in the session just closed, several bills relating entirely to the internal regulations and spiritual discipline of the Church, have been frustrated or postponed by the parties in the House of Commons who usually advocate the Dissenters' claims. Perpetually declaiming against the want of discipline in the Church of England, they themselves have just, with all their might, prevented the means of enforcing such discipline, as if they were fearful of losing one source of complaint, and wished to injure its efficiency. Messrs. Hume and Duncombe, and the parties clamorous for the Voluntary System, have exhibited to the world. the unseemly sight of interfering with measures which the Bishops and Clergy had fully approved, for the regulation of the internal affairs of the Church. Let the Dissenters cordially join in deprecating such unhallowed interference; and, while they seek for their own immunity from external interference, let them be just, and not endeavour to → impose the yoke on others. If the Dissenters shew themselves honest in their proceedings, they will meet with no difficulty in obtaining all that the justice of the case demands; if they seek an exemption from what they choose to term grievances, merely that they may thereby oppress or injure the Church, they will hand down their name and cause to disgrace, as that of men who acted from motives of a narrow-minded sectarianism, though pretending to the highest liberality. You, Sir, probably have it in your power to save them from this lasting disgrace; and for the sake of those rights of conscience, which they and you profess, I entreat you to make the trial.

Oct. 15, 1836.

A FRIEND TO CONSISTENCY.

THE SPIRITS IN PRISON.

(1 PETER iii. 19.)

PERHAPS there is no passage in the New Testament which has given greater cause for discussion, with so little attainment of a clear and satisfactory sense, as the above. Bishop Horsley has a sermon on the subject; but, though deeply learned and interesting, it appears to the writer of this extremely unsatisfactory. His meaning seems to be (for his usual clearness is not found in this discourse) that our Lord went in his disembodied spirit, in the interval between death and the resurrection, into that part of the invisible world, where the souls of the righteous were" in safe keeping," (so he renders the original word prison,) and proclaimed the accomplishment of the great work of salvation; and then he quotes the passage from the Apocalypse, in which it is said that "the sea gave up the dead which were in it," as a remarkable instance of a desire in the inspired writers to intimate to us, that all who perished in the flood were not necessarily included in the number of the lost. This last is a mere assumption of the learned prelate; for, surely the above phrase from the Apocalypse can have no special reference to the Antediluvians. That the disembodied soul of Christ went into that part of Hades called Paradise, is clear from Scripture it is not, however, clear that he preached there, unless this passage proves it; but the passage itself is disputed, and must therefore be first shewed to prove it. The real difficulty appears to the writer to arise from the mention of those who perished in the flood;— a difficulty which is overlooked, or slurred over, by the great body (perhaps all) of the Commentators. If Christ preached in Hades the accomplishment of the great atonement, and the consequent deliverance at the resurrection of all the souls in Paradise, this was a fact in which all the righteous were alike interested,-why then should the Antediluvians, who perished in the flood, be alone singled out, as if they had some special interest in this preaching beyond the rest? This seems to constitute the great, nay, perhaps the only real difficulty.

To enter into any thing like a review of all the criticisms which have been hazarded on this text, is beyond the limits of this article; the only one necessary to notice is, that by the words "spirits in prison" is undoubtedly meant the souls of those who perished in the flood, and who were in prison at the time of St. Peter's writing this epistle. They were disobedient in the days of Noah; they perished in the flood; they were thenceforth, and still continue, in the prison of Hades; not, surely, in Paradise, but in that place which is named by St. Peter himself, in the original Greek, Tartarus, (2 Pet. ii. 4,) where the fallen angels are "delivered into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;" and it is very remarkable that he goes on in this latter passage, immediately after speaking of the angels, and the prison of Tartarus, to mention the destruction of the old world, and the salvation of "Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, by bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly." There is the same contrast here, as in the above text, between Noah and the ungodly; and this, too, in words closely resembling the former declaration. So far from

any intimation of their having repented, according to Bishop Horsley's notion, they are expressly called "the ungodly."

In this latter passage, these antediluvians are cited by St. Peter as a remarkable instance of disobedience; and perhaps it might be sufficient to say that they were introduced into the text only as an example of disobedience: yet this mention of them will, on a nearer view of the design of the apostle, be found only incidental, and as a portion of a very different subject of exhortation. Let us then proceed to this investigation, first premising a few remarks.

In the text it is said, "in the ark, a few (that is eight) souls were saved by water;" and, in allusion to this in the Baptismal Service, it is said, that God did "save Noah and his family in the ark from perishing by water." In these words it is very commonly supposed, and many eminent critics maintain, that the sense is-were saved from water, not by water; and we are referred to St. Paul for a parallel expression (1 Cor. iii. 15), "he shall be saved; yet so as by fire;" where the metaphor evidently is that of escape out of, or through a building on fire. The metaphor, however, is inapplicable to the ark, which did not pass through, but floated upon the water. The comparison, too, has express reference to baptism. The water of baptism is compared, not to the ark of Noah, but to the water of the flood; just as St. Paul compares it to the water of the Red Sea, saying, that the Israelites "were baptized unto Moses in the cloud, and in the sea." (1 Cor. x. 2.) And, accordingly, our Baptismal Service makes the ark the emblem of Christ's church, not of baptism: "That this child may be received into the ark of Christ's church." There can be no doubt, therefore, that the above criticism is wrong, and that the apostle, followed by our own Baptismal Service, means a saving by water, not from the water.

Now there are several points of comparison between baptism and the flood: the destruction brought on the world by the flood is not, I apprehend, included in the comparison; except in so far as the flood made a distinction between the righteous and the disobedient. The flood made this distinction; baptism does the same. The flood (as God's righteous judgments) passed a sentence of justification on Noah: it executed the sentence of condemnation upon the ungodly. We may, however, well suppose, (and Faber, in his learned work on the patriarchal times, endeavours to prove,) that Noah was in danger of his life from the opposition which his preaching had excited; and that therefore the flood was a real deliverance, and temporal salvation to him. At any rate, we may suppose that he was subjected to all sorts of insult and persecution from the ungodly world; and, in this lesser sense, it was at least a deliverance to him. In the same manner, the Red Sea was employed as the instrument which destroyed the Egyptians, but delivered Israel.

This emblem of baptism, taken from the flood, is usually passed over by us in modern times, because we look upon the flood as an instrument of destruction only, and forget that it was salvation to Noah and his family. But the incongruity of this emblem arises, I fear, in our minds, from low notions of baptism. We should never think of making such a comparison as that of baptism to the waters of creation, over which the Holy Spirit brooded,-to the waters of the flood,

which saved Noah,-to the waters of the Red Sea, which baptized Israel, or to the waters of the Jordan, which cleansed Naaman; yet the early Church did make these comparisons, and were fully borne out by Scripture in so doing, and especially by the language of St. Peter.

It appears, then, to me, that St. Peter, when he compared baptism to so vast a thing as the flood, passed by all lesser and other points of comparison, although true, as far as they go, and had in his mind this one point of comparison alone-the wonderful energy and power of Omnipotence. The same power and omnipotence of which the flood was an example, was also put forth "in the laver of regeneration," in baptizing us into the death of Christ, and raising us up in him unto his resurrection. In short, the whole of this passage under review has a reference to baptism, and to that alone. The phrases relating to Christ's death and resurrection are here to be understood as having a tacit resemblance to our baptism; images which are frequently also used elsewhere in the New Testament, and especially in the Epistle to the Romans. We will now, bearing these observations in mind, proceed to a nearer view of the text.

Paley observes, in his Horæ Paulinæ, a singularity in St. Paul's style, which he calls, "going off at a word;" by which he means, that the apostle frequently digresses from the subject in hand to follow some new train of thought suggested by some apparently casual expression; and then, after such digression, returns again to the original line of argument. Now it appears that we have, in this portion of Scripture, a similar example in St. Peter. At verse 17th, the apostle exhorts Christians to suffering patiently, and reminds them that Christ had suffered for them. Now the suffering of Christ, and his death, immediately suggested the thought to the apostle of that being planted into the death and resurrection of Christ, which was bestowed in baptism, of the obligations that were therein implied, the vastness of its privileges, the mighty power of God therein displayed, and the danger of disobedience. He dwells upon these with apparent adoration, and gives vent to that adoration in the magnificent image of the flood; and then, after this splendid digression, he returns to the original exhortation. For the preaching of Christ by Noah is not simply confined to his act of preaching, but takes in the whole order of the events consequent on that preaching; it especially includes that most wonderful display of the energy of his almighty power, in that he brought in the flood, and saved Noah and his household. The preaching of Christ, mentioned in the text, includes this wonderful display and to this vast and astonishing display of omnipotence, the baptism of Christians, the apostle asserts, is the antitype; the power of Christ being equally conspicuous in both. Christ had died; they had also died in baptism. Christ had been raised again; so had they in baptism. In their baptism, they had known and felt as great and wonderful and effectual a working of Christ's power as Noah had seen in the mighty flood of waters. The omnipotence of Christ, his Spirit, his Divinity, had been as wonderfully demonstrated in their regeneration by baptism, as it had been in his own resurrection, or in the deliverance of Noah by the flood. Such seems the train of thought in this difficult passage: and if so, it is evident that the leading idea is the flood; and that the words, "he went

and preached," &c. are merely subordinate, and by way of a lively representation; for the effects of that preaching, namely, the flood, rather than the preaching itself, is the object which the apostle had in view.

It will be seen that in the words "quickened by the Spirit," the writer understands the word "spirit" of the Divine nature of Christ; in which he is borne out by the ancient versions, and by Mosheim and Michaelis. For a similar antithesis between the human and divine natures of Christ, we may refer to Rom. i. 3, 4; ix. 5; 1 Tim. iii. 16. Bishop Horsley, and Bishop Middleton in his Doctrine of the Greek Article, insist much on this antithesis, yet neither seem, to the writer, to have preserved it so as to make out a consistent interpretation with what follows. Horsley's version is," being put to death in the flesh, but quick in the spirit:" the antithesis requires "quickened." Middleton renders" dead carnally, but alive spiritually;" and both seem to take the word "spirit," or "spiritually," only as denoting the human soul of Christ; but this seems quite inconsistent with what follows, and with the usual phraseology of Scripture, which contrasts the infirmity and weakness of the human nature of Christ, evidenced in his crucifixion, with the power and glory of his Divine nature, evidenced in his resurrection; evidenced also in the text by his bringing in the flood, and by the regeneration of his servants in baptism. In any translation, or exposition of these words, we must not only keep up a perfect antithesis between the words flesh and spirit, but in such a way as to be made consistent with what follows: and this essential condition seems to have been universally violated. If we say Christ was raised up by his divine nature, then the antithesis requires that he should have been put to death by his human nature; which is manifestly absurd. Although some of the above interpreters have rightly explained the words flesh and spirit, in this sense, they all seem to the writer to have failed in rendering a consistent interpretation. The meaning is evidently this, that Christ died in the human nature, that is, invested with all its attributes of infirmity and weakness, and seemed to his enemies to have lost, in his death, all claims to the high homage which he had vindicated to himself; but he was raised up in his divine nature, that is, clothed with all the attributes of divinity, and "proved to be the Son of God with power;" proved to be possessed of that same divinity and power, whereby he brought in the flood; and whereby he still continues to save his people" in the laver of regeneration."

The translation, then, may run thus, commencing with the 17th verse. "For it is better, if the will of God will it, to suffer as well-doers, than as ill-doers; because even Christ suffered once for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God: even he, who was put to death in his human nature, but quickened, and made to live again, in his divine nature; in that very same divine nature, I say, in which he went and preached to the souls now in prison, who disobeyed that preaching once, when God's long-suffering anxiously waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark; and a few souls (that is to say, eight only,) having embarked into that ark, were saved by water. And baptism, which is the antitype of this water of the flood, (not,