SINGULAR inferences are made from this connection; sometimes it is used in one way, at other times another; and by some to prove probation in the pope's purgatory. A little common-sense application of Grammar will settle the difficulty. By which (verse 9), refers back to spirit in the 18th verse for its antecedent. Thus, by which (Spirit) also he went and preached to the spirits in prison, (the grave at the present time). When did he do this? When once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah. Who preached to these spirits? Certainly Noah was the one who preached in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing. See verse 20. Then it is clear that the preaching to these spirits was done by Noah, in the days of Noah (by the Spirit), actuated by the Spirit of God, as if Christ had preached it; and now those spirits are in the grave (prison). Why was it necessary to preach to them? Because they were disobedient (verse 20); they had provoked God, and he warned them; and when they did not heed the warning, the flood came and destroyed them. Then the flood was a type, and the same waters which destroyed the wicked antediluvians, buoyed up the ark; and the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ made a way for the resurrection of the just; baptism being only a figure, an ordinance, reminding us of the burial and resurrection of Christ, pointing back to that, as the deluge (baptism of the earth) pointed forward to it, by the like figure. Then what do we infer? That the deluge was a baptism of the physical earth, and pointed forward to the burial and resurrection of Christ, as the means of its final restoration to the Eden state, by the like figure, as the baptism of believers points back to the burial and resurrection of Christ, as the second Adam, who is to restore man to his first estate, in the new earth.