oming now to the last stage of the old dispensation, the
Covenant of Sinai, we find several marked and impressive
additions to the former revelations. But
they will all be found rather developments
of existing features of the gospel, than new elements. These
traits were, chiefly the republication of the moral Law with
every adjunct of majesty and authority, the establishment of a
Theocratic State-Church, in place of simpler patriarchal forms,
with fully detailed civic institutions, the Passover, a new sacrament; and the great development of the sacrificial ritual.
The Covenant of Sinai has seemed to many to wear such an aspect of legality, that they have supposed themselves constrained to regard it as a species of Covenant of Works; and, therefore a recession from the Abrahamic Covenant, which, we are expressly told, (John viii: 56; Gal. iii: 8,) contained the gospel. Now, it is one objection, that this view, making two distinct dispensations between Adam and Christ, and the first a dispensation of the Covenant of Grace, and the one which came after, of the Covenant of Works, is a priori, unreasonable. For, it is unreasonable in this: that it is a recession, instead of a progress; whereas every consistent idea of the plan of Revelation makes it progressive. It is unreasonable; because both the Old and New Testaments represent the Sinai Covenant as a signal honor and privilege to Israel. But they also represent the Covenant of Works as inevitably a covenant of death to man after the Fall; so that had the transactions of Sinai been a regression from the "Gospel preached before unto Abraham," to a Covenant of Works, it would have been a most signal curse poured out on the chosen people. The attempt is made to evade this, by saying that, while eternal life to the Hebrews was now suspended on a covenant of works, they were ritual works only, in which an exact formal compliance was all that was required. This is untenable; because it is inconsistent with God's spiritual and unchangeable character, and with His honor; and because the Mosaic Scriptures are as plain as the New Testament in disclaiming the sufficiency of an exact ritual righteousness, as the term of eternal life, and in requiring a perfect, spiritual obedience. If a ritual obedience was accepted instead of a spiritual one, that was an act of grace -- a remission of the claims of laws -- so that the Mosaic turns out a dispensation of grace, after all. But grace was preached to Abel, Noah, Abraham, in a prior dispensation, through a Mediator to come. Now, through what medium was this gracious remission of law given to Israel, at Sinai? The answer we give is so consistent, that it appears self-evident, almost: That it was through the same Christ to come, already preached to the Patriarchs, and now typified in the Levitical sacrifices. So that the theory I combat resolves itself, in spite of itself, as it were, into the correct theory, viz: That the promise contained in the Covenant of Sinai was through the Mediator, typified in the Levitical sacrifices; and that the term for enjoying that promise was not legal, not an exact ritual obedience, but gospel faith in the antitype.
The French divines, Camero and Amgraut, proposed an ingenious modification of the legal theory of Moses' covenant: That in it a certain kind of life was proposed (as in the Covenant of Works,) as a reward for an exact obedience: But that the life was temporal, in a prosperous Canaan, and the obedience was ritual. This is true, so far as a visible church-standing turned on a ritual obedience. But to the Hebrew, that temporal life in happy Canaan was a type of heaven; which was not promised to an exact moral obedience, but to faith. Were this theory modified, so as to represent this dependence of the Hebrew's church-standing on his ritual obedience, as a mere type and emblem of the law's spiritual work as a " schoolmaster to lead us to Christ," it might stand.
But let us proceed to a more exact examination. We find that the transactions at Sinai included the following: (a) A republication of the Moral Law, with greatest majesty and authority. (b) An expansion of the Ritual of the typical service, with the addition of a second sacrament, the passover. (c) The change of the visible Church instituted in Gen. 17th, into a theocratic Commonwealth- Church -- both in one. (d) The legal conditions of outward good-standing were made more burdensome and exacting than they had been before. This last feature was not a novelty, (See Gen. xvii: 14,) but it was made more stringent.
Can the designs of these modifications be explained consistently with our view? Yes. As to the theocratic state, this was necessitated by the numbers of the Church, which had outgrown the family state -- and needed temporal institutions capable of still larger growth, even into a grand nation. The amplified ritual was designed to foreshadow the approaching Christ, and the promises of the Covenant more fully. Next: The legal conditions for retaining outward ecclesiastical privileges were made more stringent, in order to enable the Law to fulfill more energetically the purpose for which St. Paul says it was added, to be a paedagogue to lead to Christ. (See Gal. iii; 19, 22). For this stringency was designed to be, to the Israelite, a perpetual reminder of the law which was to Adam, the condition of life, now broken, and its wrath already incurred, thus to hedge up the awakened conscience to Christ. This greater urgency was made necessary by the sinfulness of the Church and its tendencies to apostasy, with the seductions of Paganism now general in the rest of mankind.
The passover, a peculiarly gospel sacrament, was added, to illustrate the way of salvation by faith, upon occasion of the exodus and deliverance of the first-born. The captivity in Egypt was an emblem of man's bondage under the curse; and the dreadful death of the first-born, of the infliction of the sentence. The Hebrews escape that doom, by substituting a sacrifice; which is a type of Christ. (See Jno. i: 36; 1 Cor. v: 7). But the saved family then eat that victim, thus signifying the appropriating act of faith, very much as is done in the commemorative sacrament of the Supper now.
The followers of Cocceius and his school have texts which, we admit, bear plausibly against our identification of the Mosaic and Abrahamic dispensations. They point us, not only to the numerous places in the Pentateuch which seem to say, like Levit. xviii: 5, "Do, and live;" but to such passages as Jer. xxxi: 32, which seems to say that the Covenant of Grace is "not according to the covenant made the fathers in the day God took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt." So, they urge Jno. i: 17: Gal. iii: 12; Rom. x: 5; Gal. iv: 25; Heb. viii: 7 -- 13; ix: 8; ii: 3. (The new covenant "began to be spoken by the Lord," and so, must not antedate the Christian era), vii: 18, and such like passages.
But, notwithstanding this array, there are preponderating, even irresistible arguments for the other side. And first, we urge the general consideration that the Bible never speaks of more than two Covenants: that of the Law, or Works, and that of Grace. The dispensations also are but two, "the first and the second;" the "new and the old." But if Moses' dispensation was a legal one in essence, then we must have three; for Abraham's was doubtless a gracious one. We add, that there are but two imaginable ways; and but two known to Scripture; "grace" and "works," by which a soul can win adoption of life. The latter, the Scriptures declare to be utterly impracticable after man's fall. Since the Israelites were fallen men, if their covenant was not gracious, it was only a condemning one. Its result was only their destruction. But, second, the latter conclusion is utterly inconsistent with the fact that God covenanted with them at Sinai, in mercy, and not in judicial wrath: as their redeemer and deliverer, and not as their destroyer. This transaction, whatever it was, was proposed and accepted as a privilege, not a curse. Exod. xix: 5; xx: 2; xxxiv: 6, 7; Ps. 1xxviii: 35. For, third, the compact of Sinai included all the essential parties and features, and adopted the very formula, which we have seen were characteristic of the Covenant of Grace. On the one side was God, transacting with them, not as Proprietor and Judge, but, as beneficent Father. On the other side was the people, a mass chosen in their sin and unworthiness. See Ezek. xvi: 3 -- 6; Ps. cix: 21; Is. xxxvii: 35. Between these parties was Moses, as a Mediator, the most eminent type of Christ in the whole history. And the compact is ratified in the very terms of the covenant of Grace. " I will be your God, and ye shall be my people." (See Levit. xxvi: 12; Jer. xi: 4; xxx: 22). Fourth: I borrow the argument of the Apostle from Gal. iii: 17; fidelity to the bond already contracted with Abraham and his seed, forbade the after formation of a different compact with them. The last testament is valid in law against the previous ones, but the first bond excludes subsequent contracts of an inconsistent tenour. This is powerfully confirmed by the fact, that Moses, in confirming the Sinai-Covenant with Israel, tells them more than once, that they enter it as Abraham's seed. Deut. vii: 8, 9, 12; Exod. iii: 6, 7. Compare Ps. cv: 6; Isaiah xli: 8. This shows that, whatever the covenant with Abraham was, that with Israel was a renewal of it. Fifth: The very "book of the testimony," and all the utensils of the sanctuary were purified with blood; as we are taught in Heb. ix: 18-23. Why all this? The Apostle says it was to foreshadow the truth, that Christ's blood must be the real propitiation carried, for sinners, into the upper sanctuary. Our opponents would agree with us, that the sacrifices of the altar were the most notable features of the Levitical dispensation. But we are taught that these all pointed to Christ, the true priest and victim. Heb. ix: 23, etc., tells us that this great feature, that "without the shedding of blood was no remission," was to hold up the grand truth of the necessity of satisfaction for guilt by Christ's blood. Thus, the more Levitical sacrifices we find, the more Gospel do we find. Sixth: Men feel driven to the conclusion we combat, they say, by the re-enactment of the law. But the law, both moral and ritual, was in force under Abraham. See Rom. v: 13, 14; Gen. xvii: 14.
Seventh: Both the moral, and a (less burdensome) ritual law are still binding, in the same sense, under the New Testament dispensation, (See Matt. v: i7; Jno. iii: 5; Mark xvi: 16.) Surely the New Testament is not therefore a Covenant of Works! Last, Christ expressly says, that Moses taught of Him. Luke xxiv: 27; Jno. v: 46. Moses must then, have taught the Gospel. And in Rom. x: 6, the inspired expositor, when he would state the plan of salvation by grace through faith, in express contrast to the Covenant of Works (as stated in Levit. xviii: 5, for instance) borrows the very words of Moses' Covenant with Israel from Deut. xxx: 11. Does he abuse the sense?
To remove the cavil founded on each text quoted against us, by a detailed exposition, would consume too much space. It is not necessary. By discussing one of the strongest of them, we shall sufficiently suggest the clue to all. The most plausible objection is that drawn from Jer. xxxi: 32, where the prophet seems to assert an express opposition between the new covenant, which Heb, vii, indisputably explains as the Covenant of Grace, and that made with Israel at the Exodus. There is unquestionably, a difference asserted here; and it is the difference between law and grace. But it is the Covenant of Sinai viewed in one of its limited aspects only, which is here set in antithesis to the Covenant of Grace: It is the secular theocratic covenant, in which political and temporal prosperity in Canaan was promised, and calamity threatened, on the conditions of theocratic obedience or rebellion. The justice and relevancy of the prophet Jeremiah's, and of the apostle's logic, in selecting this aspect of the Sinai Covenant to display, by contrast, the grace of the new covenant, are seen in this: that self-righteous Jews, throwing away all the gracious features of their national compact, and thus perverting its real nature, were founding all their pride and hopes on this secular feature. The prophet points out to them that the fate of the nation, under that theocratic bond, had been disaster and ruin; and this, because the people had ever been too perverse to comply with its legal terms, especially, inasmuch as God had left them to their own strength. But the spiritual covenant was to differ (as it always had), in this vital respect: that God, while covenanting with His people for their obedience, would make it His part to write His law in their hearts. Thus He would Himself graciously ensure their continuance in faith and obedience. Witsius happily confirms this view, by remarking that, in all the places where the secular, theocratic compact is stated, as a Covenant of Works, we see no pledge on God's part, that He "will circumcise their hearts," as in Deut. xxx: 6. There, the ensuing compact is interpreted by St. Paul (Rom. x: 6,) as the Covenant of Grace. So, in Jer. xxxi: 33, 34. God engages graciously to work in His elect people the holy affections and principles, which will embrace, and cleave to the promise. But in all such places as Levit. xviii: 5; Jer. xxxi: 29; Ezek. xviii, the duties required are secular, and the good gained or forfeited is national. In truth, the transaction of God with Israel was two-fold: it had its shell, and its kernel; its body, and its spirit; its type, and its antitype. The corporate, theocratic, political nation was the shell: the elect seed were the kernel. See Rom. chaps. x and xi. The secular promise was the type: the spiritual promise of redemption through Christ was the antitype. The law was added as "a schoolmaster," to bring God's true people, the spiritual seed mixed in the outward body, to Christ. This law the carnal abused, as they do now, by the attempt to establish their own righteousness under it.
A correct view of the nature of that display made of the Covenant of Grace in the Old Dispensation, will be gained by comparing it with the New. All orthodox writers agree that there is both law and gospel in the Old Testament Scriptures. If, by the Old Testament Covenant, is understood only that legal covenant of moral and ceremonial works, then there will indeed be ground for all the strong contrast, when it is compared with the Gospel in the New Testament, which some writers draw between the severity and terror of the one, and the grace of the other. But in our comparison, we shall be understood as comparing the Old Dispensation with the New, taken with all their features, as two wholes. We find Turrettin (Ques. 8, section 18, 25), makes them differ in their date or time, in their clearness, in their facility of observance, in their mildness, in their perfection, in their liberty, in their amplitude, and in their perpetuity. Calvin (B. 2, ch. 11,) finds five differences: that the Old Testament promises eternal life typically under figures of Canaan, that the Old Testament is mainly typical, that it is literal (while the New Testament is spiritual) that it gendered to bondage, and that it limited its benefits to one nation.
I am persuaded that the strong representations which these writers (and most others following them,) and, yet more, the Cocceian school, give of the bondage, terror, literalness, and intolerable weight of the institutions under which Old Testament saints lived, will strike the attentive reader as incorrect. The experience, as recorded of those saints, does not answer to this theory; but shows them in the enjoyment of a dispensation free, spiritual, gracious, consoling. I ask emphatically: does not the New Testament Christian of all ages, go to the recorded experiences of those very Old Testament saints, for the most happy and glowing expressions in which to utter his hope, gratitude, spiritual joy? Is it said that these are the experiences of eminent saints, who had this full joy (even as compared to New Testament saints) not because the published truth was equal to that now given: but because they had higher spiritual discernment? I reply: By nature they were just like "us, sinners of the gentiles;" so that if they had more spiritual discernment, it must be because there was a freer and fuller dispensation of the Holy Ghost to them than to us. (Much fuller! to repair all defect of means, and more than bring them to a level.) But this overthrows Calvin's idea of the dispensation as a less liberal one. Or, is it pleaded that these are only the inspired, and therefore exceptional cases of the Old Testament Church? I answer: Did not God give the inspired experiences as appropriate models for those of their brethren? These distorted representations have been produced by the seeming force of such passages as Jno. i: 17; 2 Cor. iii: 6, 7; Gal. iii: 19, 23; iv: 1, 4 and 24-26; Heb. viii: 8; Acts xv: 10. But the scope and circumstances of the Apostles, in making such statements, are greatly overlooked. They were arguing, for the gospel plan, against self-righteous Jews, who had perversely cast away the gospel significance out of the Mosaic institutions to which they clung, and who retained only the condemning features of those institutions; vainly hoping to make a righteousness out of compliance with a law, whose very intent was to remind men that they could make no righteousness for themselves. Hence we must always remember that the Apostles are using, to a certain extent, an argumentum ad hominem: they are speaking of the Mosaic institutions under the Jewish view of them. They are treating of that side or aspect, which alone the perverse Jew retained of them. Here is the key.
The truth is, both dispensations are precisely alike, in having two sides to them: a law which condemns those who will persist in self-righteous plans; and a gospel which rescues the humble believer from that condemnation. The obligation of Works, (which was reenacted in the Decalogue,) is perpetual, being founded on the very relations between man and God, on all except those who are exempted from it by the substitutionary righteousness of the Mediator. It is of force now, on all others. It thunders just as it did in Eden and on Sinai. Nor, I beg you to note, is the Old Testament singular, in enjoining a ritual law, which is also "the letter that killeth," a "carnal ordinance," a "ministration of death," to those who perversely refuse to be pointed by it to the Messiah, and who try to make a self-righteousness out of it. The New Testament also has its sacraments; all are commanded to partake, yet he that eateth and drinketh, not discerning the Lord's body, "eateth and drinketh damnation to himself;" and he that takes the water of Baptism self-righteously, only sees therein a terrible symbol of his need of a cleansing which he does not receive. Let an evangelical Christian imagine himself instructing and refuting a modern Ritualist of the school of Rome or the Tractarians. He would find himself necessarily employing an argumentum ad hominem precisely like that of Paul against the Pharisees. The evangelical believer would be forced to distinguish between the legal or condemning, and the gospel side of our own sacraments; and he would proceed to show, that by attempting to make a self-righteousness out of those sacraments, the modern Pharisee was going back under a dispensation of condemnation and bondage; that he was throwing away 'the spirit which giveth life,' and retaining only the 'letter that killeth.'
The New Testament has also its sacrifice; the one sacrifice of Christ; and to him who rejects the pardon which it purchased, it is a ministry of damnation, more emphatic than all the blood of beasts could utter. Both dispensations have their "letter that killeth," as well as their "spirit that giveth life," their Sinai as well as their Zion. And in the very place alluded to, it is the killing letter of the New Testament of which Paul speaks, 2 Cor iii: 6. Resides in the Old Testament no part of the ritual could be more crushing than the moral commandment "exceeding broad," is to the unrenewed. But see Matt. V: I7-20.
Again, the Old Testament distinguished both as to its word, and its ordinances, between this letter that killeth and this spirit that giveth life. Deut. x: 12; Ps. L: 16, 17, 22 and 23; Prov. xxi: 3; i Samuel xv: 22; Ps. li: 16, 17; Isa. i: 13-20 etc.
Now just as the Christian minister would argue with a nominal Christian who persisted in making a righteousness out of the sacraments, so the Apostles argued with the Jews, who persisted in making a righteousness out of their ritual. Thus abused, the ritual of the Old Testament and of the New loses its gracious side, and only retains its condemning. Peter says, Acts xv: 10, the ritual was a yoke which neither Jews nor their fathers were able to bear. Did God signalize His favor to His chosen people by imposing an intolerable ritual? Is it true that well disposed Jews could not bear it? See Luke i: 6; Phil. iii: 6. No: Peter has in view the ritual used in that self-righteous sense, in which the Judaizing Christians regarded it while desiring to impose it on Gentiles. As a rule of justification it would be intolerable. The decalogue (2 Cor. iii: 7) would be a ministration of death to him who persisted to use it as these Jews did. But Moses gave it as only one side, one member of his dispensation, "to be a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ." Gal. iii: 16 speaks of a law given 430 years after the Covenant of Grace, and seeming to be contrasted. But it "could not disannul it." Did not Abraham's Covenant of Grace survive this law, as much in the ante-Christian, as in the post-Christian times?
Calvin says, as I conceive, perverting the sense of Gal. 4th, that the time of bondage, in which "the heir " differed nothing from the slave," was the time of the Jewish dispensation, while the time of liberation was the time of the Christian dispensation. Not so. As to the visible Church collectively, and its outward or ecclesiastical privilege, this was true; but not as to individual believers in the Church. And this distinction satisfies the Apostle's scope in Gal. 3d and 4th, and Heb. viii: 7, 8, and reconciles with passages about to be quoted. [cf. Turrettin on Heb. ix: 8, Que. 11, section 14.] Was David still in bondage, " differing nothing from that of a slave," when he sung Ps. xxxii: i, 2, cxvi: 16? The time of tutelage was, to each soul, the time of his self-righteous, unbelieving, convicted, but unhumbled struggles. The time of the liberty is, when he has flown to Christ. This, whether he was Israelite or Christian. Isaac, says another, symbolized the gospel believer, Ishmael, the Hebrew. Were not Isaac and Ishmael contemporary? Interpret the allegory consistently. And was it not Isaac, who was, not allegorically, but literally and actually, the Hebrew, the subject of an Old Testament dispensation, a ritual dispensation, a typical one, only differing from the Mosaic in details? This would be to represent the Apostle as making a bungling allegory, indeed, to choose the man who was actually under the dispensation of bondage, as the type of the liberty, had St. Paul intended to prove that the Old Dispensation was a bondage. And it would be bungling logic, again, to represent the spiritual liberty to which he wished to lead his hearers, by sonship to Abraham, if Abraham were the very head, with whom the dispensation of bondage was formed! St. Paul warns the foolish Galatians who "desired to be under the law." " Do ye not hear the law?" (Gal. iv: 21.) The thing which the law says to such self-righteous fools, is read in, Gal. iii: 10. "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse," etc. St. Paul's allegory says that Ishmael's mother (the type of the soul in bondage) represents Sinai, and Sinai again, " The Jerusalem which now is." Sarah, then, represents what? "The Jerusalem which is above, and is free." Which of these answereth to King David's Zion' "the city of the great King, in whose palaces God is known as a Refuge"? (Ps. xlviii: 3, 4.) Obviously, Sarah and her children. But the Pharisees of the Apostle's day claimed to be the heirs of that very Zion, and did literally and geographically inhabit it! How is this? They inhere in form the free-woman's heirs -- in fact, bastards. And they had disinherited themselves, by casting away the gospel, and selecting the legal significance of the transactions of Sinai. The Sinai which now anwsereth to the bond-woman is not the Sinai of Moses, of Jehovah, and of Abraham; but the Sinai of the legalist, the Sinai which the Pharisee insisted on having.
You will not understand me as asserting that the Old Testament dispensation was as well adapted to the purposes of redemption as the New. This would be in the teeth of Heb. viii: 7, ff. The inferior clearness, fullness, and liberality result necessarily from the fact that it preceded Christ's coming in the flesh. The visible Church, in its collective capacity, was as to its outward means and privileges, in a state of minority and pupilage. But every true believer in it looked forward by faith, through that very condition of inferiority, to the blessings covenanted to him in the coming Messiah; so that his soul, individually, was not in a state of minority or bondage; but in a state of full adoption and freedom. This state of the visible Church, however, as contrasted with that which the Church now enjoys, is illustrative of the contrast between the spiritual state of the elect soul, before conversion, while convicted and self-righteous, and after conversion while rejoicing in hope. This remark may serve to explain the language of Galatians 3d and 4th.
I would discard, then, those representations of the intolerable harshness, bondage, literalness, absence of spiritual blessing, in the old dispensation, and give the following modified statement.
(a.) The old dispensation preceded the actual transacting of Christ's vicarious work. The new dispensation succeeds it.
(b.) Hence, the ritual teachings, (not all the teachings) of the old dispensation were typical; those of the New Testament are commemorative symbols. A type is a symbolic prediction; and for the same reason that prophecy is less intelligible before the event, than history of it afterwards, there was less clearness and fullness of disclosure. (See i Pet. i: 12.) Again, because under the Old Testament the Divine sacrifice by which guilt was to be removed, was still to be made; the sacrificial types, (those very types which foreshadowed the pardoning grace as well as the condemning justice,) presented a more prominent and repeated exhibition of guilt than now, under the gospel; when the sacrifice is completed; (Heb. x: because it was harder to look to the true propitiation in the future, than it is now in the past; the voice of the law, the paedagogue who directed men's eyes to Christ, was graciously rendered louder and more frequent than it is now.
(c) Perspicuity in commemorating being easier than in predicting, the ritual teachings of the previous dispensation were more numerous, varied and laborious.
(d) God, in His inscrutable wisdom, saw fit to limit the old dispensation to one nation, so far at least, as to require that any sinner embracing it should become an Israelite; and to make the necessary ritual territorial and local. Under the New Testament all nations are received alike.
(e) The previous dispensation was temporary, the New Testament will last till the consummation of all things. With reference to the state of the Old Testament saints in the other world, we discard the whole fable of the Papists concerning a limbus patrum, and the postponement of the application of redemption to them till Christ's death. Christ's suretyship is such that His undertaking the believer's work, releases the believer as soon as the condition is fulfilled. He is not merely Fide jussor, but ex promissor (Turrettin), Christ being an immutable, almighty and faithful surety, when He undertook to make satisfaction to the law, it was, in the eye of that God to whom a thousand years are but as one day, as good as done. (Here, by the way, is some evidence that the chief necessity of atonement was not to make a governmental display, but to satisfy God's own attributes). See Rom. iii: 25; Heb. ix: 15; Ps. xxxii: I, z; li: 2; I o -- I g; ciii: I 2; Is. xliv: 22; Luke xvi: 22, 23; with Matt. viii: 11; Luke ix: 31; Ps. 1xxiii: 24; I Pet. iii: 19; Heb. xi: 16; xii: 23.
These texts seems to me to prove, beyond all doubt, that Christ's sacrifice was for the guilt of Old Testament believers, as well as those under the New Testament; that the anticipative satisfaction was imputed to the ancient saints when they believed, and that at their death, they went to the place of glory in God's presence. What else can we make of the translations of Enoch and Elijah, and the appearance of Moses in glory, before Christ's death?
The strength of the Papists' scriptural argument is in the last two of the texts cited by me. I may add, also, Rev. xiv: 13, which the Papists would have us understand, as though the terminus a quo of the blessedness of the believing dead were from the date of that oracle; implying that hitherto those dying in the Lord had not been immediately blessed. It is a flagrant objection to this exposition, that the Apocalypse was a whole generation after Christ's resurrection, when, according to Papists, the dying saints began to go to heaven. The terminus is, evidently, the date of each saint's death. The testimony from Heb. ix: 8, you have seen answered, by your text-book, Turrettin. The Apostle's scope here shows that his words are not to be wrested to prove that there was no application of redemption until after Christ died. The author is attempting to show that the Levitical temple and ritual were designed to be superseded. This he argues, with admirable address, from the nature of the services themselves: The priests offered continually, and the High Priest every year, by the direction of the Holy Ghost; by which God showed that that ritual was not to be permanent; for if it had been adequate, it would have done its work and ceased. Its repetition showed that the work of redemption was not done; and never would be, until another dispensation came, more efficacious than it. Such is the scope. Now, the words, "the way into the sanctuary was not yet manifested," in such a connection, are far short of an assertion, that no believing soul could, at death, be admitted to heaven. Is not the meaning rather, that until Christ finished His sacrifice, the human priest still stood between men and the mercy-seat?
But the locus palmarius of the Papists for a Limbus Patrum, is 1 Pet. iii: 19, ff. On this obscure text you may consult, besides commentaries, (among whom see Calvin in loco,) Knapp, Chr. Theol section 96; Turrettin, Loc. xii, Que. 11, section 15; Loc. xiii, Que. 15, section 12. Here, again, our safest guide is the Apostle's scope, which is this: Christ is our Exemplar in submitting patiently to undeserved suffering. For Him his own people slew: the very Saviour who, so far from deserving ill at their hands, had in all ages been offering gospel mercy to them and their fathers, even to those most reprobate of all, the Antediluvians. But the same Divine Nature in which Christ had been so mercifully carrying a slighted gospel to that ancient generation, (now, for their unbelief, shut up in the prison of hell,) gloriously raised Him from the dead, after their equally reprobate posterity had unjustly slain Him. Here is our encouragement while we suffer innocently after the example of our Head. For this resurrection, which glorified Him over all His ancient and recent enemies, will save us. Then we, redeemed by that grace which was symbolized to the ancient believers by the type of the ark, and to modern, by the sacrament of baptism, will emerge triumphantly from an opposing and persecuting world; as Christ's little Church. (consisting then of a number contemptible in unbelievers' eyes,) in Noah's day, came out from the world of unbelievers.
With this simple and consistent view of the Apostle's drift, the whole dream of a descent into Hades, and a release of the souls of the patriarchs from their limbus, is superfiuous, and therefore unreasonable.
Special thanks to Michael Bremmer of Sola Scriptura!.