Eusebius of Caesarea

Now the laws of love summoned him even as far as death and the dead themselves, so that he might summon the souls of those who were long time dead. And so because he cared for the salvation of all for ages past and that "he might bring to nothing him that has the power of death," as Scripture teaches, here again he underwent the dispensation in his mingled natures: as man, he left his body to the usual burial, while as God he departed from it. For he cried with a loud cry, and said to the Father, "I commend my spirit," and departed from the body free, in no way waiting for death, who was lagging as it were in fear to come to him. No, rather, he pursued him from behind and drove him on, trodden under his feet and fleeing, and he burst the eternal gates of his dark realms and made a road of return back again to life for the dead there bound with the bonds of death. Thus too, his own body was raised up, and many bodies of the sleeping saints arose and came together with him into the holy and real city of heaven, as rightly is said by the holy words: "Death has prevailed and swallowed people up; but again the Lord God has taken away every tear from every face." And the Savior of the universe, our Lord, the Christ of God, called Victor, is represented in the prophetic predictions as reviling death and releasing the souls that are bound there, by whom he raises the hymn of victory.