INTO HADES : A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 231 



The contrast between the dignified restraint of the Biblical 

 statements of this mysterious fact and the turgid exaggerations of 

 the myths which have been so fully set before us to-day, is in itself 

 evidence for differentiating their respective origins. 



Chancellor LiAS, who had originally consented to preside, but was 

 unable through ill-health, sent the following communication : — 

 I regret that I was unable to preside, as announced, at the reading 

 of Canon MacCulloch's able and learned paper. I feel that the 

 thanks of the Institute are due to him for having thrown such 

 light on a most interesting subject. The Descent into Hades is 

 quite a common subject for treatment in mediaeval art. I remember 

 the impression produced on my mind fifty-five years ago by a fresco 

 of it in the cloisters of Santa ^laria Novella at Florence. Many of 

 the mediaeval hymns and sermons bear witness to the detailed belief 

 of the Church in that period, as described in Canon MacCulloch's 

 paper. 



He refers to the famous " Dated Creed of Sirmium," so genially 

 ridiculed by Athanasius for its pompous words of introduction, as 

 the first Creed in which the Descent into Hades appears. That 

 Creed, as the historian Socrates tells us {Hist. Ecd., U, 37), was 

 drawn up in Latin. The Greek Creed, submitted to the Council hj 

 Mark of Arethusa, omits the Descent. The Apostles' Creed, the 

 only one of the three Creeds contained in the Service Books of the 

 Church of England which mentions the Descent, is also of Latin 

 origin. This looks very much as if the belief in the Descent in 

 early times was more prominent and more detailed in the West 

 than in the East. 



Canon MacCulloch starts with the part of the Gospel of 

 Nicodemus which contains the legend of the Descent. I confess I 

 can hardly understand why. The Gospel of Nicodemus has come 

 down to us in many forms, in Latin as well as Greek, and seems 

 in its present shape to be the result of a gradual process of 

 evolution (see the Canon's fifth note on p. 213), and to be of 

 considerably later date than the third century, in which some 

 critics imagine it to have appeared. The starting point of our 

 investigations should surely be I Pet. iii, 18-21, as confirmed by 

 iv, 6. I am not in sympathy, I must confess, with modern analytic 

 criticism, and I can hardly admit that St. Peter (see p. 218) followed 

 *' an early tradition " in these passages. He had ample opportunities 



Q 



