Circumcision. Scarcely less remarkable than this selection of scriptural types of Baptism, or of events in the life of our Blessed Saviour bearing upon it, is the omission of another type, equally sanctioned by Holy Scripture, to which the school of Calvin gave a remarkable prominence-Circumcision. It seems to have been omitted by the ancient liturgies, and not introduced into our own, under the same feeling with which the others were inserted, viz: that in prayer to God, men naturally appeal to those things which He has done for them, as the ground of imploring future mercies. "We have heard with our ears, O God, and our fathers have told us, the mighty works that Thou didst in their times, and in the old times before them." Whereupon there follows, as there precedes, the petition, that "God will arise, help us, and deliver us, for His Name's sake, and for His honor." The deliverance by the flood and the Red Sea were eminent interpositions of this sort; they not only signified God's mercy, but, as far as this life is concerned, they conferred it; they were actual and most signal temporal mercies, figuring the spiritual, yet to come: Circumcision also figured spiritual mercies; it figured also spiritual duties; but it conferred not the one, nor the strength to perform the other. The flood and the Red Sea typified the washing away of past sin; Circumcision, the cutting off "the sinful lusts of the flesh," which had wrought it, and would re-produce it. It was also obviously a great mark of God's favor, that He condescended to bring any to a nearer approach to Him, and to give them a visible and distinctive mark; it was, (what so many now make the Christian Sacrament to be,) an outward introduction to the privileges comprised in being His people. Yet itself conferred nothing; it was no mean nor channel of spiritual grace. Scripture has no where the slightest hint of what moderns so often assume, that it imparted any spiritual benefit: the Old Testament names it but little; it alludes but three times. to its spiritual meaning; twice, to bid men themselves do for themselves, (as far as under the old dispensation they were enabled,) that which it signified, put away their sins from them; in the remaining placet it is a prophecy; that after the Captivity God would restore them to their own land, and there "circumcise their heart, and the heart of their seed, to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and with all their soul, that they *Deut. x. 16. Jer. iv. 4. * † Deut. xxx. 6. St. Cyprian quotes this and Jer. iv. as prophecies of the cessation of the carnal circumcision, and the bringing in of the spiritual. Testim. c. Jud. i. 8. and Justin M. who quotes Jer. iv. Dial. c. Tryph. § 28. Orig. Hom. 5. in Jerem. § 14. Greg. Nyss. Testim. de adv. Dom. T. 2. p.157. might live," a promise accomplished in the Gospel. In the New Testament it is spoken of, at best, as a thing indifferent,* neither good nor bad, neither to be effaced by those who had it, nor sought by those who had it not; but, for the most part, to disparage it, in the case of those who would yet stay themselves on the shadow, when the substance was come: in the one place, where it is mentioned as typical of our Christian circumcision, they are carefully distinguished. Baptism is not called simply by the name of this type of it (probably lest the Jews, already overvaluing and proud of the figure, should confound it with the substance.) In the case of the passage of the Red Sea, or the water from the rock, type and antitype are blended together; in the one, their fathers are said to have been "baptized;" in the other to have drunk "spiritual drink ;” but Circumcision the Apostle expressly separates from Baptism, and contrasts the sacrament with its type, in that he calls it a circumcision made without hands." As well then might we with the Jewish false-accusers, identify that " temple made without hands," which our Lord raised up after three days, with the material Jewish temple; as well, that building of God, that house made without hands,§ eternal in the heavens," wherewith the faithful "long to be clothed," and "groan after," with this our corruptible clay, our "earthly house" as confound the "Circumcision made without hands," with the "Circumcision made with hands," "the Circumcision of Christ," with the Circumcision of the law. "Since," says Theodoret, "having been led away, they embraced the observance of the law, he again teaches the difference of the Circumcision. For, he says, it is not carnal, but spiritual; not made with hands, but divine; not the taking away of a little flesh, but the freeing from all corruption. And of these things the source is, not the law, but the Lord Christ, the lawgiver of the law; for this he means by 'in Whom ye were circumcised,' and again in the circumcision of Christ."" And St. Chrysostome," Circumcision," he says, "is no longer with the knife, but in Christ Himself. For not, as before, doth the hand effect this circumcision, but the Spirit. It circumciseth not a part, but the whole man. The one is a body, the other also is a body; but the one is circumcised in the flesh, the other spiritually. It is not then as with the Jews. For ye have not stripped off the flesh, but sins. When and how? in Baptism. And what he calls 'circumcision,' again he calls a tomb. He speaketh of what is greater than circumcision, for they did not merely cast away what was circumcised, but they destroyed it, they effaced it." Thus also did the whole of Antiquity understand Holy Scripture. *1 Cor. vii. 13. Col. ii. 11. Ad loc. + Ib. x. 2, 4. 1 Cor. v. 1. ¶ Ad loc. They thought not of comparing the shadows with the substance, the symbols with the reality, the image with the truth, the introductory rites with the witnesses of His Presence. The reformed school confounded them, partly, in seeking over-anxiously for some scriptural justification of Infant Baptism, since they debarred themselves from appealing to the authority of the Church; partly, from having lost sight of the characteristic of the Christian Sacraments,—the union with Christ. Denying them to be means of grace, they could not but esteem them equivalent to the signs of the Old Testament. Both are significant rites; the Ancient Church believed, that the rites of the law signified "the good things to come," but could not convey them, because He in Whom they were to be bestowed upon us, was not yet come; while it is by virtue of that coming in our flesh, that the Christian Sacraments do convey them. The modern school held, in fact, that those gifts were conveyed by neither; that the symbols of the Old Testament, and the Sacraments of the New, were alike signs of God's grace, not its channels; that where the sign was given, the substance also was given, although independently, and without connection with the sign; and that, consequently, regeneration (which is signified by circumcision) was bestowed upon those to whom was given the sign of circumcision; and that Baptism in the Name of the Holy Trinity was only a sign like those of the older dispensation.t The traces of this system are found, even where it is not strictly received. It may be well then, as a corrective, to exhibit the marked way in which the fathers contrast circumcision with its antitype, our Baptism in Christ. "This circumcision," says S. Justin, M.‡ is not necessary to all, but to you only-For neither that unprofitable baptism of cisterns' do we receive. For it is nothing to this Baptism of life. Wherefore also God cried aloud, that 'ye left Him the living Fountain, and dug for yourselves broken cisterns,' which can hold no water. And ye, the circumcised in the flesh, need our cir * Ainsworth's Censure upon a Dialogue of the Anabaptists, p. 49. "They to whom God giveth the signe and seale of righteousness by faith, and of regeneration, they have faith and regeneration; for God giveth no lying signe; Hee sealeth no vaine or false Covenant. But God gave to infants circumcision, which was the signe and seale of the righteousnesse of faith and regeneration. Gen. xvii. 12; Rom. iv. 11, and ii. 28, 29; Col. ii. 11. Therefore infants had (and, consequently, now have) faith and regeneration, though not in the crop and harvest by declaration, yet in the bud and beginning of all Christian graces. They that deny this reason, must either make God the author of a lying signe and seale of the Covenant to Abraham and his infants, or they must hold, that infants had those graces then, but not now; both which are wicked and absurd to affirme. Or they must say, that circumcision was not the signe and seale of the righteousness of faith, and then they openly con tradict the Scripture. Rom. iv. 11." Comp. Calv. Instit. iv. 16. 4. Dial. c. Tryph. § 19 † See note K. at the end. 66 cumcision; but we, having this, have no need of the other." Whereupon S. Justin proceeds to argue that had circumcision been necessary, God would not have accepted Abel, or Enoch, or Lot, or Noah, being uncircumcised, or Melchisedech, to whom, although uncircumcised, Abraham, who first received circumcision in the flesh, paid tithes. Afterwards,* he insists on what St. Paul said, that Abraham received circumcision for a sign, not for justification, as the Scriptures and the very fact compel us to confess," in tacit contrast with Baptism as the means of justification; and that women could not receive the circumcision in the flesh" [as they do Baptism] 'showing that circumcision is given for a sign, not to work righteousness." "I cry aloud," he adds,t "the blood of that circumcision hath been done away; and we have believed in the saving Blood; now there is another covenant, and another 'law' has gone forth from Zion.' Christ, the true Joshua, circumcises all who will, as was preached beforehand, with knives of stone, that there may be a righteous nation." "See ye," he observes,‡ "how God rejects this circumcision, which was given as a sign? for it profits_neither the Egyptians, nor the children of Moab, nor of Edom. But be any even a Scythian or Persian, and have the knowledge of God and of His Christ, and keep he the everlasting righteousness, he is circumcised with the excellent and helpful circumcision, and is a friend of God; and God is pleased with his gifts and oblations.” "Whats account of circumcision to me, who have this testimony of God? or what need of that Baptism, who have been baptized by the Holy Ghost?" "That|| command that children should be circumcised on the eighth day, was a type of the true circumcision, wherewith we were circumcised from error and wickedness through Him Who rose from the dead, on the first day of the week, Jesus Christ our Dial. c. Tryph. 23. +Ib. 24. St. Ambrose, in like way, considers the shedding of blood in circumcision as belonging to the typical character of the old dispensation, and no longer necessary, when "by the shedding of the Blood of the Lord, the price was paid to ransom us all."-Ep. 72. ad Constantium, § 9. So Orig. in Rom. L. 11. 13. p. 495. ed. de la Rue. § Ib. § 29. Ib. 28. on Jer. ix. 25. Dial. c. Tryph. 41. Justin M. refers to this again § 24. It occurs also in S. Cyprian (below, p. 259.) S. Cyril Alex. Glaph. in Gen. L. 3. p. 80. in Joan L. iv. c. 7. pp. 432 [ex err. 424] and 438. Aug. de nupt. et concup. ii. c. 11. de pecc. orig. c. 31. Op. Imp. c. Julian. ii. 151; iv. 134. Ep. 157. ad. Hilar. 14. Ambrose de Abr. c. xi. § 79. Origin refers the eighth day to the "world to come," (which comes indeed to the same, as being opened to us by His resurrection.) Hom. 8. in Lev. 4. (see above, p. 246.) The de sabb. et circ. (c. 5.) "that the regeneration of all should be after the seventh day. For circumcision signified nothing else than the putting off of the birth. For we are stripped of him who died on the sixth day" (Adam's fall on the Friday) and are renewed on the Lord's day, when the old man being stripped off was born again through the Resurrection." VOL. II.-9 Lord." "And we* who through Him have approached to God, have received the circumcision, not in the flesh, but the spiritual, which Enoch, and those like him, kept. But we, having become sinners, received it through Baptism, by the mercy of God; and all may alike receive it." Such are the chief contrasts, which Justin M. draws between Circumcision and Baptism; the one the type, the other the substance; the one a "broken cistern," the other a living fountain; the one circumcision in the flesh, the other in the Spirit; the one a mere mark of one people, rejected by God, unprofitable, incapable of justifying, the other a "Baptism to life," "excellent, helpful, ""wrought by Christ Himself" " to justification," making our persons and oblations acceptable to Him, "to the end that we may be a righteous nation ;" a" Baptism in the Holy Ghost, through the Resurrection of our Lord." S. Irenæust uses the same argument as Justin M., as to the patriarchs who pleased God, being uncircumcised, regarding also circumcision as a mere intermediate ordinance, and looking upon the patriarchs who pleased God without it, as a sort of anticipation of Christian holiness. "This faith amid uncircumcision, as joining the end to the beginning, was made the first and the last. For it existed in Abraham and the other saints, who pleased God, before circumcision; and again in the last times, it sprung up in the human race, through the coming of the Lord. But circumcision and the law occupied the intermediate period." The imperfection of circumcision he derives from Holy Scripture.‡ "But that God gave circumcision, not as a perfecter of righteousness, but as a sign whereby the race of Abraham might remain distinguished, we learn from Holy Scripture itself (Gen. xvii. 9. sqq.) These things" (Circumcision and the Sabbath) were given for a sign, but they were not without a symbolical meaning, nor superfluous, as having been given by a wise Artificer; but the circumcision after the flesh signified the spiritual Circumcision." S. Irenæus proceeds, "that man was not justified by these things, but that they were given as a sign to the people." Tertullian refers to the patriarchs, as did Justin M. and Irenæus, as a proof against the inherent necessity of Circumcision; denies that it cleanses man ;"§ says that Abraham received it, as a sign for those times, not for any saving privilege in it; that the case of Zipporah shows that it had no saving efficacy, else had not Moses neglected it;" but that "God foreseeing that He should give this circumcision as a sign, not for salvation, to the people of Israel, therefore suggested the circumcision of the son of Moses their future leader, lest they should despise it. For circumcision was to be given; but as a sign whereby Israel might be |