During the three days, then, that Messiah's body lay in the tomb at Jerusalem, his spirit was in the world of spirits preaching to those who had rejected the testimony of righteous Noah. The Christian traditions no less than the scriptures teach that Jesus went down into hell and preached to those there held in ward. "In the second and third centuries, every branch and division of Christians, so far as their records enable us to judge, believed that Christ preached to the departed; and this belief dates back to our earliest reliable sources of information in the former of these two centuries." [10] "As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed that he went down into hell." [11] A writer in Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature referring to the passage in Peter on preaching to the spirits in prison, says: "These 'spirits in prison' are supposed to be the holy dead. * * * The most intelligent meaning suggested by the context is, however, that Christ by his spirit preached to those who in the time of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, were disobedient, and whose spirits are now in prison, abiding the general judgment. The prison is doubtless hades, but what hades is must be determined by other passages of scripture; and whether it is the grave or hell, it is still a prison for those who await the judgment day." Not only is the mere fact of Messiah's going to prison stated in the scripture, but the purpose of his going there is learned from the same source. "For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." [12] This manifestly means that these spirits who had once rejected the counsels of God against themselves, had the gospel again preached to them and had the privilege of living according to its precepts in the spirit life, and of being judged according to men in the flesh, or as men in the flesh are judged; that is, according to the degree of their faithfulness to the precepts of the gospel.