Calvin, we believe, treats the ‘Descent into Hell’ as legendary. Servetus thinks the Hebrew word _Scheol_ signifies the _grave_ as well as the traditional _hell_, and seems to make it a kind of resting-place for the unregenerate until the resurrection. Adam, he says, by his transgression fell both soul and body into the power of the Serpent. But where can the soul of him be after death who is the slave of such a master? Are not the gates of Paradise closed against him?--is not the whole man given over to the power of the mighty tyrant? ‘Who shall set him free? No one, assuredly, but Christ’--and so on, in terms entirely unobjectionable, and in complete conformity with accredited opinion; but tending, we imagine, to what is called _Universalism_, Servetus believing, as we read him, that all men would be saved in the end, though ordinary sinners would have to wait until the day of Judgment. He nowhere speaks of any lake of burning brimstone, fanned by the Devil, in which the wicked are tortured throughout eternity. Annihilation, with him, is the penalty of unpardonable sin. The Twentieth Epistle is especially interesting as showing us the very heart of the writer; letting us into his secret, as it were, and showing us the ideas that led him to his scheme of restoring the lapsed faith of mankind in Christ as the naturally begotten Son of God, and of reconstituting his Church, long vanished from the face of the earth. The true Church, however, is not to be thought of as an institution made by man, but as a foundation originated by Christ. And the question as to where this true Church exists, is not difficult of determination if the authority of the Scriptures be admitted as paramount in matters of belief. But the authority of the Scriptures, and of the true Church represented by those purified by the water of baptism and governed by the Holy Spirit, he says, is equal ‘_The true Church of Christ, indeed, is independent of the Scriptures. There was a Church of Christ before there was any writing of the Apostles._ But where is now the Church? Ever present in celestial spirits and the souls of the blest, it fled from earth as many as 1260 years ago. It is in heaven, and typified by the woman adorned with the sun and the twelve stars (Revelation). Invisible among us now, it will again be seen before long. We with ours, the congregation of Christ, will be the Church. Towards the restoration of this Church it is that I labour incessantly; and it is because I mix myself up with that battle of Michael and the Angels, and seek to have all the pious on my side, that you are displeased with me. As the good angels did battle in heaven against the Dragon, so do other angels now contend against the Papacy on earth. Do you not believe that the angels will prevail? But as the Dragon could not, so neither can the Papacy, be worsted without the angels. The celestial regeneration by baptism it is that makes us equals of the angels in our war with spiritual iniquity.