35. [XXX.]—Why the Circumcision of Infants Was Enjoined Under Pain of So Great a Punishment.

The Scripture does not inform us whether before Abraham’s time righteous men or their children were marked by any bodily or visible sign.216    Sacramento. Abraham himself, indeed, received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith.217    Rom. iv. 11. And he received it with this accompanying injunction: All the male infants of his household were from that very time to be circumcised, while fresh from their mother’s womb, on the eighth day from their birth;218    Gen. xvii. 10. so that even they who were not yet able with the heart to believe unto righteousness, should nevertheless receive the seal of the righteousness of faith. And this command was imposed with so fearful a sanction, that God said: “That soul shall be cut off from his people, whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised on the eighth day.”219    Gen. xvii. 14. If inquiry be made into the justice of so terrible a penalty, will not the entire argument of these men about free will, and the laudable soundness and purity of nature, however cleverly maintained, fall to pieces, struck down and fractured to atoms? For, pray tell me, what evil has an infant committed of his own will, that, for the negligence of another in not circumcising him, he himself must be condemned, and with so severe a condemnation, that that soul must be cut off from his people? It was not of any temporal death that this fear was inflicted, since of righteous persons, when they died, it used rather to be said, “And he was gathered unto his people;”220    Gen. xxv. 17. or, “He was gathered to his fathers:”221    1 Macc. ii. 69. for no attempt to separate a man from his people is long formidable to him, when his own people is itself the people of God.

CAPUT XXX.

35. Et ante Abraham quidem utrum aliquo corporali et visibili sacramento justi, vel eorum parvuli signarentur, Scriptura non exprimit. Ipse tamen Abraham signum accepit circumcisionis, signaculum justitiae fidei (Rom. IV, 11). Et sic accepit, ut deinceps etiam omnes parvulos domus suae circumcidere juberetur, recentissimos a visceribus matrum, octavo die nativitatis eorum; ut etiam hi, qui corde ad justitiam credere nondum possent, justitiae tamen fidei signaculum sumerent. Quod sub terrore tanto est imperatum, ut diceret Deus, animam illam de suo populo perituram, cujus octavo die praeputii circumcisio facta non fuisset (Gen. XVII). Hujus tam horribilis poenae justitia si quaeratur, nonne istorum omnis de libero arbitrio et laudabili sanitate et puritate naturae, quantumlibet arguta sit argumentatio, repercussa et confracta dissiliet? Quid enim mali, quaeso, parvulus propria voluntate commisit, ut alio negligente et eum non circumcidente, ipse damnetur, damnatione tam severa, ut pereat anima illa de populo suo? Neque enim temporalis mortis terror incussus est; cum de justis, quando moriebantur, tunc potius diceretur, Et appositus est ad populum suum (Id. XXV, 17); vel, appositus est ad patres suos (I Machab. II, 69): quoniam deinceps homini nulla tentatio formidatur, 0403 quae illum separet a populo suo, si populus ejus ipse est populus Dei.