Wakefield also maintains decidedly that this pas sage is a parable. So also do Hammond, and Theophylact, a more ancient critic, and others. But we must add a quotation from the very Orthodox Gill. After having, in his exposition of the passage, run it, for the sake of his theology, into the future state, for the credit of his understanding, he explains as follows:

“The rich man died:' It may also be understood of the political and ecclesiastical death of the Jewish people, which lay in the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, and of the temple, and in the abolition of the temple worship, and of the whole ceremonial law; a Loammi was written upon their church state, and the covenant between God and them was broken; the gospel was removed from them, which was as death, as the return of it, and their call by it, will be as life from the dead; as well as their place and nation, their civil power and authority were taken away from them by the Romans, and a death of afflictions, by captivities and calamities of every kind, has attended them ever since."

In hell― in torments; "This may regard the vengeance of God on the Jews, at the destruction of Jerusalem, when a fire was kindled against their land, and burned to the lowest hell, and consumed the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains; and the whole land became brimstone, salt, and burning; and they were rooted out of it in anger, wrath, and great indignation see Deut. xxix. 23, 27, 28, xxxii. 22— or rather the dreadful calamities which came upon them in the times of Adrian, at Bither; when their false Messiah, Bar Cochab, was taken and slain, and such multitudes of them were destroyed, in the most miserable manner, when that people, who before had their eyes darkened, and a spirit of slumber and stupidity fallen upon them, in those calamities began to be under some convictions."

We have been the more particular in our expo

sition of this parable, because we have had written requests for an explanation of it, from candid inquirers after truth, and because it is clung to more pertinaciously than any other passage of the Scriptures, as at least favoring the doctrine of future endless punishment. We have shown that the word hades, in no other instance in the Bible, is used for a place of future punishment; that if it were so used here, it could prove only punishment in an intermediate state, because all shall be raised out of hades, and the state itself be destroyed; but that the passage does not prove even that limited punishment in hades, since it cannot be received as a real history, but must be taken as a parable, and as such, though a part of its imagery is drawn from the heathen fables of the under-world, instead of giving sanction to those fables, it forbids our adoption of them, and commands us back to the word of God in the Scriptures of truth. To this word let us hearken.

SECTION VII.

The Case of Judas.

In the cluster of fragmentary passages thrown to gether by our learned opponent, which we transcribed into the beginning of the preceding Section, succeeding the reference to the rich man in hades, is the following: "Judas by transgression fell, and went to his own place." There is an error here in the quotation, as the reading of the text is, not, and went to his own

place, but, "that he might go to his own place." A careless reader might overlook the importance of this error in the Doctor's quotation; but the critical student will perceive that there is a significance in the true reading of the record which has an instructive bearing upon the sense of the passage. It makes the going to his own place the fulfilment of a prophecy or purpose. If it relates to Matthias, as some eminent Orthodox commentators suppose, it expresses the purpose for which the election fell to him by lot; and if it refers to Judas, it expresses the purpose for which he withdrew from the apostleship, or his allotment in the fulfilment of prophecy. "And they

prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two (Barsabas or Matthias) thou hast chosen, that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place." (Acts i. 24, 25.) The idea is, that it was for the purpose that he might fill the place assigned him by the counsel of God prophetically revealed, or else, that he might return to his former occupation, that he by transgression fell.

But Dr. Adams considers the mere quotation of this scrap of the record an "argument" for future punishment. He gives us not a word explanatory of his reason for so regarding it, except the following in his next sentence, "Judas' own place' was not heaven." How does he know it was not? If Paradise was the place of the thief on the cross, even if it be placed on the ground of his dying expression of

respect for Jesus, what authority has Dr. Adams to assert that it was not the place of Judas, who uttered the strongest dying testimony of the purity of Jesus, and gave practical proof of the sincerity of his penitence by throwing down the price of his perfidy at the feet of his seducers, and either they or he purchased with it a field; and so severe was his anguish. that "he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out," -or his heart broke, as the word bowels is sometimes used in the Scriptures for heart. With this agrees a fair rendering of Matt. xxvii. 5, reading, instead of "hanged himself," choked of anguish. Thus are the records of Matthew and Luke, which in the Common Version are contradictory, seen to be in harmony, both implying the death of Judas by internal rupture from excessive anguish on account of his sin in betraying innocent blood.* His repentance was as real as that of the thief on the cross, and no man, even on the popular scheme of making the hereafter heaven a reward of dying penitence, can say that Judas' place is not heaven.

But we do not understand that heaven was meant by this language in the case before us, neither a place of future endless punishment. Some place, or position, or allotment, was evidently referred to,

*On the manner of Judas' death, Dr. Clarke quotes with full approval the following from Rev. John Jones, in his Illustrations of the Four Gospels: - So sensible became the traitor of the distinguished rank which he forfeited, and of the deep disgrace into which he precipitated himself, by betraying his Master, that he was seized with such violent grief, as occasioned the rupture of his bowels, and ended in suffocation and death." "The late Mr. Wakefield," says Clarke, fends this meaning with great learning and ingenuity." And Dr. Clarke, I may say, endorses this opinion, and adds, that "the Greek word which we (that is, King James' Assembly) translate hanged himself, is by the very best critics rendered, was choked." For more on this subject, see the APPENDIX.

de

either which Judas had in view upon abandoning Jesus, or which he was to fill in the verification of prophecy in relation to the mission and trials of Jesus.

But we will present our readers with the opinions, and the arguments too, of numbers of the most eminent Orthodox Biblical critics, on the case of Judas, and on this passage in particular. We do not understand that our opponent is to receive those revered Doctors of his school as authority; but we would have it clearly understood, that his mere paraphrastic quotation, Judas "went to his own place," adding the sententious assertion, "Judas' 'own place' was not heaven," has no weight at all against the deliberate opinions and exegetical arguments of his learned and honored brethren. And we would have it understood that these Doctors whom we shall quote were believers in "future, endless punishment," and were predisposed to find in the Scriptures all the support for it which they could conscientiously apply as such, so that it was by the force of truth upon their understandings, against their prejudices, that they were compelled to throw out this passage from the use to which they wanted it.

On the phraseology in question, " that he might go to his own place," Dr. ADAM CLARKE, in his commentary on the passage, says,-"1. Some suppose that the words that he might go to his own place, are spoken of Judas, and his punishment in hell. 2. Others refer them to the purchase of the field, made by the thirty pieces of silver, for which he had sold our Lord. So he abandoned the ministry and apostolate, that he might