In the Old Testament it is used of the Messianic King in Ps. cx. 1: "The Lord said unto My Lord, sit thou on My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." Its occurrence in this passage evidently suggested its use in the New Testament, in which it may be fairly said to be the regular phrase employed to describe the condition of the risen and glorified Saviour. So in [S. Mark] xvi. 19 we read that "the Lord Jesus . . . was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God." In Rom. viii. 32 it is said that "Christ Jesus," who was raised from the dead, "is at the right hand of God." In Col. iii. 1, He is spoken of as "seated on the right hand of God." Heb. x. 12: "He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God." 1 In all these passages, wherever the position is indicated, it is that of sitting. One exception to this there is in the New Testament. In Acts vii. 55 S. Stephen says: "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." It is remarkable that the phrase should occur here and here only; and there can be little doubt that S. Chrysostom is right in the interpretation which he puts upon the unusual expression. "Why standing, and not sitting? To show that He is ready to succour His martyr. For thus it is said also of the Father, 'Stand up, O God,' and 'now will I up, saith the Lord, I will set him in safety.'":

It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to point out that the expression, "Sitteth at the right hand of God," is to be taken metaphorically, and that, as Bishop Pearson says, "we must not look upon it as determining any posture

1In Acts ii. 33, it is doubtful whether the words should be rendered, "Being by the right hand of God exalted," or "Being at the right hand of God exalted."

Hom. vi, in Ascens.

of His body in the heavens, correspondent to the inclination and curvation of our limbs."1 Both parts of the expression are valuable for the ideas and thoughts which they are intended to bring before us. Sitting is suggestive of continuance, of rest after labour, of the king upon his throne, and the judge upon the judgment-seat. The right hand is the symbol of strength and power. is the position of honour and dignity; and, as Pearson adds, "the right hand of God is the place of celestial happiness and perfect felicity; according to that of the psalmist, 'In Thy presence is fulness of joy, at Thy right hand pleasures for evermore.""

It

At the

(c) Before leaving the subject of the Ascension and session at the right hand of God, there is one question arising in connection with it which demands a brief consideration: How far can the risen and ascended Lord be said to be present everywhere as man? time when the Articles were drawn up the subject had been brought prominently forward on the continent, owing to the unfortunate teaching of some of the Lutheran divines, following Luther himself who, in the course of the controversy on the Lord's Supper, endeavoured to support his doctrine on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist by a theory of the ubiquity or omnipresence of the human nature of the Lord, of which theory it can only be said that it is altogether destructive of the reality of the manhood, and endows it with some, at least, of the essential properties of Deity, namely, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience.

That the subject was definitely present to the minds of those who compiled our Articles is plainly indicated by the passage from the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, which has been already quoted as illustrative of this Article. And the terms used in the Article itself are

1 On the Creed, Art. VI. ch. ii,

In

quite sufficient to show that those who drew it up had no sympathy with "Ubiquitarianism," 1 but intended to attribute what can only be called a "local" presence to the body of Christ in heaven. He took again His body. . . wherewith He ascended into heaven, and there sitteth until He return, etc." But while it is necessary to repudiate any teaching which would destroy the perfection of our Lord's humanity, and practically involve us in Eutychianism, it is at the same time equally needful to guard against imagining that there are in Christ two centres of personality, and that the two natures are in any way separated from each other, a view which would implicate us in something like Nestorianism. The subject is carefully discussed by Hooker, whose guidance we may thankfully follow. the fifty-fifth chapter of the fifth book of the Ecclesiastical Polity he points out-(1) That "the substance of the body of Christ hath no presence, neither can have but only local"; (2) That "there is no proof in the world. strong enough to enforce that Christ had a true body, but by the true and natural properties of His body, amongst which properties definite or local presence is chief"; (3) That "if his majestical body have now any such new property, by force whereof it may everywhere really, even in substance, present itself, or may at once be in many places, then hath the majesty of his estate extinguished the verity of His nature." Consequently he holds it a most infallible truth that Christ as man is not everywhere present." But, having said this, he proceeds at once to add that in some sense it may be granted that even as man He is everywhere present. "His human substance in itself is naturally absent from

'The "Ubiquitarians" are frequently alluded to by Bishop Jewel in his letters. See his Works (Parker Soc.) vol. iv. pp. 1258, 1261, 1264.

the earth, His soul and body not on earth but in heaven only. Yet because the substance is inseparably joined to that personal Word which, by His very divine essence is present with all things, the nature which cannot have in itself universal presence hath it after a sort, by being nowhere severed from that which everywhere is present... Wheresoever the Word is, it hath with it manhood, else should the Word be in part or somewhere God only and not man, which is impossible." Thus there results (a) a sort of presence of the manhood by conjunction.

Again, there is a second way in which a kind of universal presence may be attributed to the manhood. It has (b) a presence of co-operation, for "that Deity of Christ which, before our Lord's Incarnation wrought all things without man, doth now work nothing wherein the nature which it hath assumed is either absent from it or idle." Touching the manner how He worketh as man in all things, the principal powers of the soul of man are the will and the understanding, the one of which two in Christ assenteth unto all things, and from the other nothing which Deity doth work is hid; so that by knowledge and assent the soul of Christ is present with all things which the Deity of Christ worketh." Further, of the body of Christ it may be said, that "although the definite limitation thereof be most sensible," yet in some sort it, too, admits of a "kind of infinite and unlimited presence." It is an integral part of that human nature which is nowhere severed from Deity, and thus a

1

1 Lest it should be said that this gives to the manhood an essential property of Deity, namely, "omniscience," it will be well for the reader to refer back to what Hooker has said in a previous chapter on the illumination of the human soul of Christ, "which being so inward unto God cannot choose but be privy unto all things which God worketh, and must therefore of necessity be endued with knowledge so far forth universal, though not with infinite knowledge peculiar to Deity itself." Eccl. Polity, bk. V. ch. liv. § 7.

presence of conjunction " may be ascribed to it. "And forasmuch as it is by virtue of that conjunction made the body of the Son of God, by whom also it was made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, this giveth it a presence of force and efficacy throughout all generations of men. Albeit, therefore, nothing be actually infinite in substance but God only in that He is God, nevertheless as every number is infinite by possibility of addition, and every line by possibility of extension infinite, so there is no stint which can be set to the value or merit of the sacrificed body of Christ; it hath no measured certainty of limits, bounds of efficacy unto life it knoweth none, but is also itself infinite in possibility of application." 1

III. The Return to Judgment.

The concluding words of the Article, Until He return to judge all men at the last day, merely repeat the substance of the corresponding clause in the Creed, "from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead," without in any way explaining or elaborating it. It does not appear that there was any special form of false teaching on this subject, which the statement was intended to combat. Errors with regard to eschatology are plainly and directly condemned in Articles XXXIX. to XLII. of the series of 1553, but in the Article before us the mention of the judgment is probably introduced incidentally rather than polemically, as being the natural close of the dispensation referred to in the previous clause, "On the session at the right hand of the Father." It will, then, be sufficient to notice here how the Article accurately follows Scripture— (a) in pointing to the Redeemer as also the Judge, and

1 The subject of the presence of Christ as Man is fully considered in Augustine's Epistola ad Dardanum, "De Præsentia Dei," Ep. clxxxvii.