This clause has place in the Creed as a protest against the heresy of Apollinaris, a Bishop of Laodicea, who taught that Christ did not assume a human soul when He became incarnate.  He thus denied the perfect manhood of Christ, and in support of His doctrine appealed to the fact that the Scripture says,[127] “The Word (in Greek, Logos) was made flesh,” “God was manifest in the flesh,” while it is never said that He was made spirit.  He sought to establish a connection between the Divine Logos and human flesh of such a kind that all the attributes of God passed into the human nature and all the human attributes into the Divine, while both together merged in one nature in Christ, who, being neither man nor God, but a mixture of God and man, held a middle place.  His heresy found many supporters, though it was promptly met by Gregory Nazianzen, who showed that the term “flesh” is used in Scripture to denote the whole human nature, and that when Christ became incarnate He took upon Him the complete nature of humanity, untainted by sin.  Only thus could He be qualified to become man’s Saviour, for only a perfect man can be a full and complete Redeemer.  Man’s spirit, his most noble element, stands in need of redemption as well as his body, for all its faculties are corrupted by sin.

In affirming that Jesus descended into hell, this clause of the Creed declares that He possessed the complete nature of humanity; that His true body died, and that His reasonable soul departed to Hades.

SECTION 2.—­THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN FROM THE DEAD[128]

On the morning of the first day of the week, thenceforth hallowed as the Lord’s Day—­the Christian Sabbath—­the soul of Jesus left Hades, and once more and for ever entered the body, and formed with it the perfected humanity of the “Word made flesh.”  The resurrection of Jesus is a well-attested fact of history.  The close-sealed, sentinelled sepulchre, the broken seal, the stone rolled away, the trembling guard, the empty tomb, and the many appearances of Jesus to the women, the disciples, the brethren, and last of all to Saul of Tarsus, prove that He had risen.[129]

The Resurrection was a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.  Peter thus interprets Psalm xvi. 10, “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption,” affirming that David in that Psalm speaks of the Resurrection of Christ.[130] Jesus Himself often foretold, both figuratively and directly, His own resurrection, as when He spoke of the coming destruction of the Temple, and connected it with the death and resurrection of His body;[131] or when He told the disciples that in a little while they should not see Him, and again in a little while they should see Him.[132] The place which this doctrine holds in the Christian faith is shown by the numerous references to it in the Epistles.