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| Of Circumcision and the Supercession of the Old Law.
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Chapter III.—Of
Circumcision and the Supercession of the Old Law.
But Abraham, (you say,) was circumcised. Yes, but
he pleased God before his circumcision;1162
| 1162 See Gen. xii.–xv. compared with xvii. and Rom.
iv. |
nor yet did he observe the Sabbath. For he had
“accepted”1163
| 1163 Acceperat. So
Tertullian renders, as it appears to me, the ἔλαβε of St. Paul in Rom. iv. 11. q. v. | circumcision; but
such as was to be for “a sign” of that time, not for a
prerogative title to salvation. In fact, subsequent patriarchs were
uncircumcised, like Melchizedek, who, uncircumcised, offered to Abraham
himself, already circumcised, on his return from battle, bread and
wine.1164
| 1164 There is, if the
text be genuine, some confusion here. Melchizedek does not appear
to have been, in any sense, “subsequent” to Abraham, for he
probably was senior to him; and, moreover, Abraham does not
appear to have been “already circumcised” carnally
when Melchizedek met him. Comp. Gen. xiv. with Gen.
xvii. | “But again,” (you say)
“the son of Moses would upon one occasion have been choked by an
angel, if Zipporah,1165
| 1165 Tertullian
writes Seffora; the LXX. in loco, Σεπφώρα Ex. iv. 24–26, where the Eng. ver. says, “the
Lord met him,” etc.; the LXX ἄγγελος
Κυρίου. | had not circumcised
the foreskin of the infant with a pebble; whence, “there is the
greatest peril if any fail to circumcise the foreskin of his
flesh.” Nay, but if circumcision altogether brought salvation,
even Moses himself, in the case of his own son, would not have omitted
to circumcise him on the eighth day; whereas it is agreed that Zipporah
did it on the journey, at the compulsion of the angel. Consider we,
accordingly, that one single infant’s compulsory circumcision
cannot have prescribed to every people, and founded, as it were, a law
for keeping this precept. For God, foreseeing that He was about to give
this circumcision to the people of Israel for “a sign,” not
for salvation, urges the circumcision of the son of Moses, their future
leader, for this reason; that, since He had begun, through him, to give
the People the precept of circumcision, the people should not despise
it, from seeing this example (of neglect) already exhibited
conspicuously in their leader’s son. For circumcision had to be
given; but as “a sign,” whence Israel in the last time
would have to be distinguished, when, in accordance with their deserts,
they should be prohibited from entering the holy city, as we see
through the words of the prophets, saying, “Your land is desert;
your cities utterly burnt with fire; your country, in your sight,
strangers shall eat up; and, deserted and subverted by strange peoples,
the daughter of Zion shall be derelict, like a shed in a vineyard, and
like a watchhouse in a cucumber-field, and as it were a city which is
being stormed.”1166
Why so?
Because the subsequent discourse of the prophet reproaches them,
saying, “Sons have I begotten and upraised, but they have
reprobated me;”1167
| 1167 Again an error;
for these words precede the others. These are found in
Isa. i. 2. | and again,
“And if ye shall have outstretched hands, I will avert my face
from you; and if ye shall have multiplied prayers, I will not hear you:
for your hands are full of blood;”1168
and again, “Woe! sinful nation; a people full of sins; wicked
sons; ye have quite forsaken God, and have provoked unto indignation
the Holy One of Israel.”1169
This, therefore,
was God’s foresight,—that of giving circumcision to Israel,
for a sign whence they might be distinguished when the time should
arrive wherein their above-mentioned deserts should prohibit their
admission into Jerusalem: which circumstance, because it was to
be, used to be announced; and, because we see it accomplished, is
recognised by us. For, as the carnal circumcision, which was temporary,
was in wrought for “a sign” in a contumacious people, so
the spiritual has been given for salvation to an obedient people; while
the prophet Jeremiah says, “Make a renewal for you, and sow not
in thorns; be circumcised to God, and circumcise the foreskin of your
heart:”1170
| 1170 Jer. iv. 3, 4. In Eng. ver., “break up
your fallow ground;” but comp. de Pu. c. vi. ad
init. | and in another
place he says, “Behold, days shall come, saith the Lord, and I
will draw up, for the house of Judah and for the house of
Jacob,1171
a new testament;
not such as I once gave their fathers in the day wherein I led them out
from the land of Egypt.”1172
Whence we
understand that the coming cessation of the former circumcision then
given, and the coming procession of a new law (not such as He had
already given to the fathers), are announced: just as Isaiah foretold,
saying that in the last days the mount of the Lord and the house of God
were to be manifest above the tops of the mounts: “And it shall
be exalted,” he says, “above the hills; and there shall
come over it all nations; and many shall walk, and say, Come, ascend we
unto the mount of the Lord, and unto the house of the God of
Jacob,”1173
—not of
Esau, the former son, but of Jacob, the second; that is,
of our “people,” whose “mount” is
Christ, “præcised without concisors’ hands,1174
filling every land,” shown in the book
of Daniel.1175
| 1175 See Dan. ii. 34, 35, 44, 45" id="iv.ix.iii-p16.1" parsed="|Dan|2|34|2|35;|Dan|2|44|0|0;|Dan|2|45|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Dan.2.34-Dan.2.35 Bible:Dan.2.44 Bible:Dan.2.45">Dan. ii. 34, 35, 44, 45. See c. xiv. below. | In short, the
coming procession of a new law out of this “house of the God of
Jacob” Isaiah in the ensuing words announces, saying, “For
from Zion shall go out a law, and the word of the Lord out of
Jerusalem, and shall judge among the nations,”—that is,
among us, who have been called out of the
nations,—“and they shall join to beat their glaives into
ploughs, and their lances into sickles; and nations shall not take up
glaive against nation, and they shall no more learn to
fight.”1176
Who else,
therefore, are understood but we, who, fully taught by the new
law, observe these practices,—the old law being obliterated, the
coming of whose abolition the action itself1177
| 1177 i.e., of
beating swords into ploughs, etc. |
demonstrates? For the wont of the old law was to avenge itself by the
vengeance of the glaive, and to pluck out “eye for eye,”
and to inflict retaliatory revenge for injury.1178
| 1178 Comp. Ex. xxi. 24, 25; Lev. xxiv. 17–22;
Deut. xix. 11–21; Matt. v. 38. |
But the new law’s wont was to point to clemency, and to convert
to tranquillity the pristine ferocity of “glaives” and
“lances,” and to remodel the pristine execution of
“war” upon the rivals and foes of the law into the pacific
actions of “ploughing” and “tilling” the
land.1179
Therefore as we have shown above that the
coming cessation of the old law and of the carnal circumcision was
declared, so, too, the observance of the new law and the spiritual
circumcision has shone out into the voluntary obediences1180
| 1180 Obsequia. See de
Pa. c. iv. note 1. | of peace. For “a people,” he
says, “whom I knew not hath served me; in obedience of the ear it
hath obeyed me.”1181
Prophets made the
announcement. But what is the “people” which was ignorant
of God, but ours, who in days bygone knew not God? and who, in
the hearing of the
ear, gave heed to Him, but we, who, forsaking idols, have been
converted to God? For Israel—who had been known to God,
and who had by Him been “upraised”1182
in
Egypt, and was transported through the Red Sea, and who in the desert,
fed forty years with manna, was wrought to the semblance of eternity,
and not contaminated with human passions,1183
or
fed on this world’s1184
| 1184 Or, perhaps,
“not affected, as a body, with human sufferings;” in
allusion to such passages as Deut. viii. 4; xxix. 5; Neh. ix.
21. | meats, but fed on
“angel’s loaves”1185
| 1185 Ps. lxxviii. (lxxvii. in LXX.) 25; comp. John
vi. 31, 32. | —the
manna—and sufficiently bound to God by His benefits—forgot
his Lord and God, saying to Aaron: “Make us gods, to go before
us: for that Moses, who ejected us from the land of Egypt, hath quite
forsaken us; and what hath befallen him we know not.” And
accordingly we, who “were not the people of God” in days
bygone, have been made His people,1186
by accepting
the new law above mentioned, and the new circumcision before
foretold.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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