the works of john gill vol2 SAMPLE

The Cause of God and Truth
acts contrary to the righteousness of God, giving himself up to every
earthly spirit, and serving all sorts of pleasures.”
Feuardentius 55 , Irenaeus’s annotator, interprets image, in the place in
dispute, of the excellent gifts of grace, righteousness, and godliness,
bestowed on man in his creation; it is therefore no piece of weakness,
to cite or refer to such a passage, showing that man has lost by the fall
the image of God, which chiefly lies, according to this ancient writer,
in the freedom of his will, and the exercise of right reason.
3. Hilary, the Deacon, is another ancient writer cited and referred to
by me, to prove that men are held in hell by Satan for the sin of Adam:
and here I am gravely reprimanded for translating inferi “hell,” and not
hades; but supposing the word inferi should not be used by Hilary, and
that these phrases apud inferos and in inferis are not to be met with in
the passages referred to, as this man has put them, as indeed they are
not; with what shame and confusion must he appear, who makes such
large pretensions to accuracy, and takes every slight occasion, and
indeed where there is none at all, of charging others with blunders!
Hilary’s words are these, speaking of sin being condemned by the cross
of Christ; “Hence,” says he, “the authority, as it were, of sin was taken
away, by which it held men (not apud inferos, as this man says, but) in
inferno, in hell, for the sin of Adam.”
Again, “Being delivered,” says he, “from a state of darkness, that is,
pulled (not inferis, but) de inferno, ‘out of hell,’ in which we were held
by the devil, both for our own, and the sin of Adam, who is the father
of all sinners; we are translated by faith into the heavenly kingdom of
the Son of God, that God might show us with what love he loves us,
when he lifts us up de imo tartari, ‘out of the lowest hell,’ and
introduces us into heaven with his own real Son.”
Now, let Hilary mean what he will by infernus and imum tartari, it is
certain, that according to him, men are in the custody of the devil, and
are in some sort of punishment, propter delictum Adæ, “for the sin of
55 Annotat. in Irenæum, p. 285.
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