Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 2.djvu/101

Rh cause of the transgression of Adam, the federal head of the human race. By death, however, they do not appear to mean the bare separation of the soul from the body; but a certain power also which Satan was permitted to exercise over the after-condition of such as died. These were retained in sheol, or as S. Peter affirms, a place of safe keeping, until the had satisfied the offended law of , and expiated man's guilt upon the cross. Afterwards He went down into the place of departed spirits to preach the gospel of the Atonement, and released the souls of the righteous which were detained there, rescued the captives of death and the grave, and placed them in Paradise, that place of "many mansions," where they rest in peace, joyfully awaiting the time of their resurrection and perfection in eternal glory. Hence they appear to believe that under the old dispensation death prevailed over all men in a way in which it does not prevail over the justified since the offering up of the all-atoning sacrifice, i.e., that death was then, in a certain sense, more penal than it is now,—that then all died, as it is declared of Abraham and all the Fathers before the death of, and went to a place from which Christians who do not die but "fall asleep," "sleep," and "rest," are exempted. Consequently they understand the words of our, "I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth in Me though he were dead yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die," to mean that those who believed on Him before He had finished the work of redemption died after a manner in which those do not die who depart this life in the faith of His glorious Atonement; and from this, they say, we can understand what the declared of John the Baptist, when He said: "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist; notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."

The following from the Khudhra, appointed for the Easter service, throws additional light on the extracts already quoted. "Adam in the beginning trampled upon the law at the suggestion of the wicked one, who thereupon claimed the recompense of unrighteousness from the child Adam in Paradise.