Poullain:

Why Christ was subject to death.

Moreover although this Jesus Christ was thus pure, holy and just, and therefore free and exempt from all charge of sin, to which we are all by nature exposed: nevertheless after that He had taken upon Him our flesh with all its infirmities, save only sin, He willingly made Himself also subject to death. But since there was in Him no stain or charge of sin, and He Himself was the Son of God, yea, God also: this man, being filled with the substance of the Godhead, and with every grace of the Holy Spirit, could not be vanquished by sin, as Adam was; He could not even be holden of death itself. Nay though He submitted to death itself in the flesh, yet being quickened by the Spirit He procured for us eternal redemption before the throne of God’s justice and mercy, for all the elect who had believed or should believe in Him. 111erefore it came to pass, that in like manner as Adam by his trespass corrupted, ruined and destroyed together with himself his whole posterity, which were born of him after the flesh: so Christ restores anew His whole family, to wit, all the elect that are born again of His own seed by the spiritual power of the Holy Ghost, and makes them fit to enter into immortality.

Therefore I profess and believe that Jesus Christ, the true and eternal Son of God according to the divine nature that is in Himself, and likewise the true son of Mary, born in time, according to the human nature that He took upon Him, appeared and came into the world in our flesh, to make satisfaction for the sins of all, and to earn for all life eternal.

‘Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified.’

And this He accomplished fully when by the judgment of Pontius Pilate He underwent a cruel and dreadful death, shameful, yea accursed (albeit by the same judgment the judge himself pronounced Him just and innocent), and was crucified like some malefactor; to the end that He Himself in His own body might bear the curse that was awaiting us, and having taken it wholly upon Himself might consume and destroy it. Finally in order that all men might have the greater certainty of His death, His lifeless body was openly taken down from the cross and laid in the sepulcher.

‘Dead, and buried, He descended into hell.’

And lest peradventure there should seem to be lacking aught of our curse that He had not taken upon Himself, He descended also into hell. For when He was dying He endured all the sharpness of death, with the weight of God’s wrath, like unto a sinner; wherefore He cries out upon the cross that He also had been forsaken of God. But when He was dead, although in the body He lay in the sepulcher, His soul was in hell, that is, in the state of the dead, being truly separated from the body.

‘The third day He rose again from the dead.’

But when He had undergone all things to which by God’s just judgment we had been condemned, in order that God’s justice should be satisfied completely: by His own power He returned to life on the third day, taking again His body, which though laid in the sepulcher could not suffer corruption, even as His soul could not be kept in hell. Thereby He openly showed that He is truly God, and hath power over death, sin, and hell; and finally, that He is Lord over all. And I for my part acknowledge, confess and believe Him.

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