Page:Ante-Nicene Fathers volume 1.djvu/214

Him by Christ Jesus, apart from whom we do not possess the true life.

says the Scripture, "Many bodies of the saints that slept arose,"^[1] their graves being opened. He descended, indeed, into Hades alone, but He arose accompanied by a multitude; and rent asunder that means^[2] of separation which had existed from the beginning of the world, and cast down its partition-wall. He also rose again in three days, the Father raising Him up; and after spending forty days with the apostles, He was received up to the Father, and "sat down at His right hand, expecting till His enemies are placed under His feet."^[3] On the day of the preparation, then, at the third hour, He received the sentence from Pilate, the Father permitting that to happen; at the sixth hour He was crucified; at the ninth hour He gave up the ghost; and before sunset He was buried.^[4] During the Sabbath He continued under the earth in the tomb in which Joseph of Arimathæa had laid Him. At the dawning of the Lord's day He arose from the dead, according to what was spoken by Himself, "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man also be three days and

1. Matt. xxvii. 52.
2. Literally, "hedge" or "fence."
3. Heb. x. 12, 13.
4. Some read, "He was taten down from the cross, and laid in a new tomb."