There are two more considerations, which may have more weight with some minds than anything I have yet brought forward, one of which I have already mentioned; the comparison of the different forms of salutation, which occur in different Epistles. In some of them we have, "Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." In others, "Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ."

This, when fully considered, will be found to amount to an entire refutation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Consider what these two forms of expression involve. God the Father, and God our Father, are used as synonymous terms, perfectly equivalent to each other. They are both applied to a Being who is entirely distinct and separate from Christ, for the words are "God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ," and "God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." God our Father, is not a Person of a Trinity. He is the whole Deity, without distinction of persons. He is the Person to whom we pray when we say, "Our Father, which art in heaven." From God our Father and any other person, must mean from God and from a person who is not God, not from the first and second Persons of a Trinity.

But the Apostle uses God the Father as precisely synonymous with God our Father. If God our Father, and God the Father, are precisely equivalent to each other, then God the Father is the whole Deity, and is not the first Person of a Trinity. And if Jesus Christ sustains the same relation to the Father, that

he does to our Father, he cannot be a Person of a Trinity, and he cannot be God at all. The parallelism of these passages, when analyzed, contains in itself an entire negative both of the plurality of the Divine nature and the Deity of Christ. Nay, Christ has told us himself, in the most explicit terms, that his Father is not a Person of a Trinity, but the whole Deity, in his message to his disciples, after his resurrection: "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, Behold, I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." This simple sentence contains in itself a refutation of the whole Trinitarian bypothesis.

The other consideration, to which I refer, was the representation of Christ as sitting on the right hand of God. This idea is purely Oriental, and is derived from the custom of placing a person peculiarly honored or exalted, in Eastern courts, at the right hand of the sovereign. A king, in an Eastern court, placed his son, or his chief minister, on his right hand, on occasions of state, to show that he was next him in power. So, according to the Theocratic and Messianic ideas of the Jews, the Messiah was to be next to Jehovah in power. Jehovah was the supreme King of Israel. The earthly kings, who reigned over that nation, were considered to reign with, or under him, to be exalted to his throne. So the Messiah was to be the successor of these kings, and greater than they all. He was to reign over all the earth, as they reigned over Judea.

Afterward, when the spiritual nature of Christ's

kingdom was revealed, the Apostles kept up the old language, and represented Christ as exalted to God's right hand at his resurrection, and exercising a spiritual dominion over his church. So much for the reason of this use of language. I shall now consider what is involved in this language itself, so far as the general subject of these lectures is concerned.

I first remark, that this exaltation, in the language of Scripture, does not make Christ a participant of Deity, but shuts him out of it. "If then ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right of God." He cannot be God, even in the highest state of exaltation, and sit on the right hand of God. This would be a contradiction in terms. Neither can one equal Person of a Trinity sit on the right hand of God, for he must be comprehended in that very God at whose right hand he sits.

Neither did sitting on the right hand of God belong to Christ originally, so that he descended from it, and was restored to it. Neither was he there previously to his resurrection. He was placed there by the power of God subsequently to the resurrection. For the Apostle says: "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom, and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being opened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us ward, who believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from

the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places." His exaltation to the right hand of God, is spoken of by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews as being subsequent to his crucifixion. “When he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." That rank did not belong to him originally, he was exalted to it, for another Apostle says, "By the resurrection of Christ, who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels, and authorities, and powers being made subject unto him."

It is in his glorified human nature that he sits at the right hand of God. The martyr Stephen "saw heaven opened, and the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." In another place it is said, that it is the same person who died, who is on the right hand of God. It was only the human nature of Christ that could die. "Who is he that condemneth? Is it Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is ever at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us."

This exaltation was bestowed on him in consequence of his sufferings, and his submitting to the bitter and disgraceful death of crucifixion; for Paul says, "Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."

And this exaltation, after all, has nothing to do with the general government of the universe, and has relation only to the church, for it is said in a passage, a

part of which is cited above, that "God raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand, in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body."

So strictly true are the words with which I commenced this discourse; "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus."

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