Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of the Male, Who Was to Lose His Soul If He Was Not Circumcised on the Eighth Day, Because He Had Broken God’s Covenant.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 27.—Of the Male, Who Was
to Lose His Soul If He Was Not Circumcised on the Eighth Day,
Because He Had Broken God’s Covenant.
When it is said, “The male who is
not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be
cut off from his people, because he hath broken my covenant,”922
some may be
troubled how that ought to be understood, since it can be no fault
of the infant whose life it is said must perish; nor has the
covenant of God been broken by him, but by his parents, who have
not taken care to circumcise him. But even the infants, not
personally in their own life, but according to the common origin of
the human race, have all broken God’s covenant in that one in
whom all have sinned.923
Now there are many things called
God’s covenants besides those two great ones, the old and the
new, which any one who pleases may read and know. For the first
covenant, which was made with the first man, is just this: “In
the day ye eat thereof, ye shall surely die.”924
Whence it is written in the book
called Ecclesiasticus, “All flesh waxeth old as doth a garment.
For the covenant from the beginning is, Thou shall die the
death.”925
Now, as
the law was more plainly given afterward, and the apostle says,
“Where no law is, there is no prevarication,”926
on what supposition is what is said
in the psalm true, “I accounted all the sinners of the earth
prevaricators,”927
except that
all who are held liable for any sin are accused of dealing
deceitfully (prevaricating) with some law? If on this account,
then, even the infants are, according to the true belief, born in
sin, not actual but original, so that we confess they have need of
grace for the remission of sins, certainly it must be acknowledged
that in the same sense in which they are sinners they are also
prevaricators of that law which was given in Paradise, according to
the truth of both scriptures, “I accounted all the sinners of the
earth prevaricators,” and “Where no law is, there is no
prevarication.” And thus, be
cause circumcision was the sign
of regeneration, and the infant, on account of the original sin by
which God’s covenant was first broken, was not undeservedly to
lose his generation unless delivered by regeneration, these divine
words are to be understood as if it had been said, Whoever is not
born again, that soul shall perish from his people, because he hath
broken my covenant, since he also has sinned in Adam with all
others. For had He said, Because he hath broken this my covenant,
He would have compelled us to understand by it only this of
circumcision; but since He has not expressly said what covenant the
infant has broken, we are free to understand Him as speaking of
that covenant of which the breach can be ascribed to an infant.
Yet if any one contends that it is said of nothing else than
circumcision, that in it the infant has broken the covenant of God
because, he is not circumcised, he must seek some method of
explanation by which it may be understood without absurdity (such
as this) that he has broken the covenant, because it has been
broken in him although not by him. Yet in this case also it is to
be observed that the soul of the infant, being guilty of no sin of
neglect against itself, would perish unjustly, unless original sin
rendered it obnoxious to punishment.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
