lieth should be called the sepulchres of that body. For if we do not thus understand the dead to be raised by the power of God out of their graves, they which are not committed to burial, nor laid in graves, but have ended their life either in shipwrecks or in some desert places, so as they could not be committed to burial, should not seem to be reckoned among them who are said should be raised up out of their graves, which would be a very great absurdity." Thus Origen. Now you shall hear, if you please, what our Romish doctors do deliver touching this point, "There be two opinions," saith Pererius", "concerning this question. The one of the Hebrews, and of many of the Christians in this our age, but especially of the heretics, affirming that the word Sheol signifieth nothing else in the Scripture, but the pit or the grave, and from thence reasoning falsely, that our Lord did not descend into hell." "The other opinion is of undoubted and certain truth: that the Hebrew word Sheol, and the Latin Infernus, answering to it, both in this place of Scripture and elsewhere oftentimes doth signify, not the pit or the grave, but the place of hell, and the places under the earth, wherein the souls are after death." "Wheresoever Hierome," saith Augustinus Steuchus upon the same place," and the Septuagint have translated hell, it is in the Hebrew, Sheol, that is, the pit or the grave. For it doth not signify that place, wherein antiquity hath thought that the souls of the wicked are received." "The Hebrew word properly sig Duæ super hac questione sunt sententiæ. Una est Hebræorum, et de Christianis multorum in hac ætate nostra, maxime vero hæreticorum affirmantium vocem Sheol non significare aliud in scriptura nisi fossam sive sepulchrum, et ex hoc falso argumentantium, Dominum nostrum non descendisse ad infernum. Perer. in Genes. cap. 37. sect. 92. " Upon Genes. chap. 37. ver. 35. * Altera est sententia exploratæ certæque veritatis; vocem Hebræam Sheol, et Latinam ei respondentem infernus, et in hoc loco scripturæ, et alibi sæpenu mero significare non fossam vel sepulchrum, sed locum inferorum, et subterranea loca, in quibus sunt animæ post mortem. Perer. in Genes. cap. 37. sect. 96. y Hebraice, ubicunque Hieronymus ac Septuaginta infernum interpretati sunt, est Sheol, hoc est, fossa sive sepulchrum. Neque enim significat cum locum, ubi sceleratorum animas recipi antiquitas opinata est. Aug. Steuch. in Gen. cap. 37. nifieth the grave:" saith Jansenius". "The grave properly, and hell only metaphorically," saith Arias Montanus, in his answer unto Leo a Castro; and, "ina the old Testament, the name of hell doth always almost import the grave:" saith Alphonsus Mendoza. The Jesuit Pineda commendeth one Cyprian a Cistercian monk, as a man famous for learning and piety, yet holdeth him worthy to be censured, for affirming that "Sheol or hell is in all the old Testament taken for the grave." Another croaking monk, Crocquet they call him, crieth out on the other side, that we shall never be able to prove, by the "producing of as much as one place of Scripture, that Sheol doth signify the grave." Cardinal Bellarmine is a little, and but a very little, more modest herein. The Hebrew Sheol, he saith, "is ordinarily taken for the place of souls under the earth: and either rarely or never, for the grave:" but the Greek worde "Hades always signifieth hell, never the grave." But Stapleton will stand to it stoutly, "that neither Hades nor Sheol is in the Scriptures ever taken for the grave, but always for hell." "The word Infernus, Hades, Sheol," saith he, "is never taken for the grave. The grave is called in Greek rápos, z Upon Proverbs, chap. 15. ver. 12. a Fere semper inferni nomen sepulchrum sonat in veteri testamento. Alphons. Mendoz. controvers. theologic. quæst. 1. positiv. sect. 5. b Illud non præteribo, parum considerate (ne graviori inuram nota) Cyprianum Cisterciensem (virum alioqui doctrina et pietate conspicuum) affirmasse, Sheol, id est, inferos vel infernum in toto veteri testamento accipi pro sepulchro. Jo. Pined. in Job, cap. 7. ver. 9. num. 2. c Et ne vehementius sibi placeant ob suum illud Sheol: nunquam efficient ut uno saltem scripturæ loco prolato præclaram illam interpretationem sepulchri confirment. Andr. Crocquet. cateches. 19. d Ordinarie accipitur pro loco animarum subterraneo; et vel raro vel nunquam, pro sepulchro. Bellarm. lib. 4. de Christo, cap. 10. • Vox äons significat semper infernum, nunquam sepulchrum. Ibid. cap. 12. Contra Bezam late ostendimus, nec onv, nec pro sepulchro unquam, sed pro inferno semper in scripturis accipi. Stapleton. antidot. in 1 Corinth. cap. 15. ver. 55. et Act. cap. 2. ver. 27. Cæterum pro sepulchro vox infernus, ädne, sv, nunquam accipitur. Sepulchrum Græce rápoç, Hebraice vocatur. Quare et omnes paraphrasta קבר Hebræorum illam vocem explicant per vocem gehennæ; ut late ostendit Genebrardus lib. 3. de Trinitate. Ibid. in Act. cap. 2. ver. 27. in Hebrew p. Wherefore all the paraphrasts of the Hebrews also do expound that word Sheol by the word Gehenna; as Genebrard doth shew at large in his third book of the Trinity." Where yet he might have learned some more moderation from Genebrard himself, unto' whom he referreth us: who thus layeth down his judgment of the matter in the place by him alleged. "Ash they be in an error who contend that Sheol doth never design the grave: so have they a shameless forehead, who deny that it doth any where signify the region of the damned or Gehenna." It is an error therefore in Stapleton, by his own author's confession, to maintain that Sheol is never taken for the grave; and in so doing, he doth but bewray his old wrangling disposition. But lest any other should take the shameless forehead from him, he faceth it down, that all the paraphrasts of the Hebrews do interpret Sheol by the word Gehenna. Whereas it is well known, that the two paraphrasts that are of greatest antiquity and credit with the Hebrews, Onkelos the interpreter of Moses, Jonathan ben Uzziel of the Prophets, never translate it so. Beside that of Onkelos, we have two other Chaldee paraphrases which expound the harder places of Moses; the one called the Targum of Jerusalem, the other attributed unto Jonathan: in neither of these can we find, that Sheol is expounded by Gehenna; but in the latter of them we see it twice' expounded by nap, the house of the grave. In the Arabic interpretations of Moses, where the translator out of the Greek hath al-giahimo, hell; there the' translator out of the Hebrew puttethal-tharay, b Quemadmodum in errore versantur, qui eam vocem nunquam sepulchrum designare contendunt: sic fronte sunt perfricta, qui uspiam Gehennæ regionem negant significare. Genebrard. de Trinitat. lib. 3. in symboli Athanasiani expositione. Gen. chap. 37. ver. 35. et chap. 44. ver. 29. * Genebrard. in Genesi, quam cum commentario Arabico MS. penes me habeo et Deuteronom. cap. 32. ver. 22. Pentateuch. Arabic. ab Erpenio, edit. ann. 1622. which signifyeth earth or clay. Jacobus TawosiusTM, in his Persian translation of the Pentateuch, for Sheol doth always put Gor", that is, the grave. The Chaldee paraphrase upon the Proverbs keepeth still the word by deflected a little from the Hebrew: the paraphrast upon ,קבורתא and קבור Job useth that word thrice; but ,קבורתא which signifieth the grave, instead thereof five several times. In Ecclesiastes the word cometh but once': and there the Chaldee paraphrast rendereth it nap n'a the house of the grave. R. Joseph Cocus doth the like in his paraphrase upon Psalm 31. ver. 17. and 89. ver 48. In Psalm 141. ver. 7. he rendereth it by the simple nap, the grave: but in the 15th and 16th verses of the 49th Psalm, by D, or Gehenna. And only there, and in Cantic. 8. ver. 6. is Sheol in the Chaldee paraphrases expounded by Gehenna: whereby if we shall understand the place, not of dead bodies (as in that place of the Psalm the paraphrast maketh express mention of the bodies waxing old or consuming in Gehenna) but of tormenting souls, as the Rabbinst more commonly do take it, yet do our Romanists get little advantage thereby, who would fain have the Sheol into which our Saviour went, be conceived to have been a place of rest, and not of torment; the bosom of Abraham, and not Gehenna, the seat of the damned. As for the Greek word Hades, it is used by Hippocrates to express the first matter of things, from which they have their beginning, and into which afterwards being dissolved they make their ending. For having said, that in nature nothing properly may be held to be newly made, or to perish, he addeth this: "But" men do think, m Pentateuch. quadrilingu, a Judæis Constantinopoli excus. n Jer apud Armenios et Turcas terram significat. Job, chap. 11. ver. 8. et chap. 24. ver. 19. et chap. 26. ver. 6. P Ibid. chap. 21. ver. 13. 9 Ibid. chap. 7. ver. 9. et chap. 14. ver. 13. et chap. 17. ver. 13. 16. " Νομίζεται δὲ παρὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, τὸ μὲν ἐξ ᾅδου εἰς φῶς αὐξηθὲν that what doth grow from Hades into light, is newly made; and what is diminished from the light into Hades, is perished;" by Light understanding nothing else but the visible structure and existence of things: and by Hades, that invisible and insensible thing which other philosophers commonly call ύλην, Chalcidius" the Platonic translateth sylvam, the Aristotelians more fitly materiam primam; whence also it is supposed by Master Casaubon*, that those passages were borrowed, which we meet withall in the books that bear the name of Hermes Trismegistus. "In the dissolution of a material body, the body itself is brought to alteration, and the form which it had is made invisible:""and" so there is a privation of the sense made, not a destruction of the bodies. I say then that the world is changed, inasmuch as every day a part thereof is made invisible, but never utterly dissolved;" wherewith we may compare likewise that place of Plutarch in his book of Living privately. "Generation" doth not make any of the things that be, but manifesteth them: neither is corruption a translation of a thing from being to not being, but rather a bringing of the thing that is dissolved unto that which is unseen. Whereupon men, according to the ancient traditions of their fathers, thinking the sun to be Apollo, called him Delius and Pythius: (namely from ma γενέσθαι· τὸ δὲ ἐκ τοῦ φάεος εἰς ᾅδην μειωθὲν, ἀπολέσθαι. Hippocrat. de diæta, sive victus ratione. lib. 1. w Chalcid. in Timæum Platonis. * Casaub. in Baron. exercit. 1. cap. 10. * Πρῶτον μὲν ἐν τῇ ἀναλύσει τοῦ σώματος τοῦ ὑλικοῦ, παραδίδωσιν αὐτὸ τὸ σῶμα εἰς ἀλλοίωσιν, καὶ τὸ εἶδος ὃ εἶχεν ἀφανὲς γίνεται. Herm. Pœmand. serm. 1. 2 Καὶ οὕτω στέρησις γίνεται τῆς αἰσθήσεως, οὐκ ἀπώλεια τῶν σωμάτων. Id. serm. 8. • Καὶ τὸν κόσμον φημὶ μεταβάλλεσθαι, διὰ τὸ γίνεσθαι μέρος αὐτοῦ καθ ̓ ἑκάστην ἡμέραν ἐν τῷ ἀφανεῖ, μηδέποτε δὲ λύεσθαι. Id. serm. 11. * Οὐ γὰρ ποιεῖ τῶν γινομένων ἔκαστον, ἀλλὰ δείκνυσιν· ὥσπερ οὐδὲ ἡ φθορὰ τοῦ ὄντος, ἄρσις εἰς τὸ μὴ ὂν ἐστὶν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον εἰς τὸ ἄδηλον ἀπαγωγὴ τοῦ διαλυθέντος. ὅθεν δὴ τὸν μὲν ἥλιον Απόλλωνα κατὰ τοὺς πατρίους καὶ παλαιοὺς θέσμους νομίζοντες, Δήλιον καὶ Πύθιον προσαγορεύουσι τὸν δὲ τῆς ἐναντίας κύριον μοίρας, εἴτε θεὸς, εἴτε δαίμων ἐστὶν, "Αδην ὀνομάζουσιν, ὡς ἂν εἰς ἀειδὲς καὶ ἀόρατον ἡμῶν, ὅταν διαλυ θῶμεν, βαδιζόντων. Plutarch. in illud, Λάθε βιώσαι. |
