6. Chap. III.
As to the first man, the father of mankind, it is agreed by almost the entire Church that the Lord loosed him from that prison; a tenet which must be believed to have been accepted not without reason,--from whatever source it was handed down to the Church,--although the authority of the canonical Scriptures cannot be brought forward as speaking expressly in its support, 1 though this seems to be the opinion which is more than any other borne out by these words in the book of Wisdom. 2 Some add to this [tradition] that the same favour was bestowed on the holy men of antiquity,--on Abel, Seth, Noah and his house, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the other patriarchs and prophets, they also being loosed from those pains at the time when the Lord descended into hell.
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We give the original of this important sentence:--"De illo quidem primo homine patre generis humani, quod eum inde solverit Ecclesia fere tota consentit: quod eam non inaniter credidisse credendum est, undecumque hoc traditum sit, etiamsi canonicarum Scripturarum hinc expressa non proferatur auctoritas." ↩
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Wisd. x. 1, 2. ↩
