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matters in the garden of Eden, where our first parents- were placed, and 
where the tree of life grew, it can only be understood as a figurative expression 
of the promise of the JVew Jerusalem, forfeited by Adam, but recovered by 
our Lord Jesus Christ. 
Thus Isaiah (ch. xiv. y. 9 ), in the song of triumph on the fall of the 
king of Babylon, Hell (the original word is the same as in the preceding 
passage) f om beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stir reth 
up tne dead for thee , even all tne chief ones of the earth: it hath raised up 
from their thrones all the kings of the nations . Thus, in Hades , all the 
m on arch s and nobles, not of one family or race, but of the whole earth, are 
assembled. Yet their sepulchres are as distant from one another as the 
nations they governed. Those mighty dead are raised, not from their 
couches, which would have been the natural expression, had the prophet’s 
idea been a sepulchral vault, how magnificent soever, but from their thrones , 
as suited to the notion of all antiquity, concerning not the bodies, but the 
shades or ghosts of the departed, to which was always assigned something 
similar in rank and occupation to what they had possessed upon the 
earth. 
I shall now proceed to examine some passages in the New Testament, 
wherein the word occurs, that we may discover whether we ought to affix 
the same idea to it as to the corresponding term in the Old —The first I 
shall produce is one, which, being originally in the Old Testament, is quoted 
and commented on in the New, and is consequently one of the fittest for 
assisting us in the discovery. Peter, in supporting the mission of his 
Master, in a speech made to the inhabitants of Judea and Jerusalem, on 
the famous day of Pentecost, alleges, amongst other things, the prediction 
of the royal Psalmist, part of which runs thus in the common version:* 
Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine 
holy One to see corruption. The passage is cited from the Psalms,f in the 
very words of the Seventy, which are (as far as concerns the present 
question) entirely conformable to the original Hebrew. As this prophecy 
might be understood by some to relate only to the Psalmist himself, the 
Apostle shews how inapplicable it is to him, when literally explained. It 
plainly pointed to a resurrection, and such a resurrection as would very soon 
* Acts, ii. 27. 
f Psalm, xvi. 10. 
