Tractates 1.13.1–1.15.6

Most carefully, dearest brothers, an account seems due of circumcision, which the most blessed Paul has mentioned not only in the present reading but in several places, so that both the Christian may know the truth and the Jew his error. For the Jew often boasts with loud cries that this is the nobility of his nation, this the power of a heavenly sacrament, this the lawful mother of eternal life, this the perpetual partner of the future kingdom, without which no one can come to the knowledge of God at all. Hence first of all I think we must define what circumcision is, so that then at last what sort of thing it is can rightly be recognised. Circumcision, brothers, is a scar made in a circle by iron, to the loss of a round wound. If the Jew thinks this a glory, to say nothing of others, greater is the glory of the man who, in honour of his goddess (a shameful old woman and a lover at that), sacrificed in fouler mysteries not a little skin of that same member but the member itself cut off at the root; for the reason, of course, that the Jew after the sacrament can sin through this part, but that man can no longer sin through this part.

It follows that he must declare whether he maintains that it is carnal or spiritual. If spiritual, why does he glory in the flesh? If carnal, it cannot profit the soul, because flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God. Add that circumcision fights against the sabbath, which he proclaims must not be violated by any work at all. For it often happens that a son is born to him on the sabbath; and unless he circumcises him on the eighth day, that is, on the coming sabbath, according to the law, the infant's soul will perish from his people. Here, dearest brothers, let him choose which he wants, to circumcise or to postpone. If he circumcises, he breaks the sabbath; if he does not circumcise, he has emptied the appointed rights of circumcision with the destruction of an innocent soul, because the eighth day alone received from God the privilege of circumcision, not the seventh, not the ninth; and so both must be empty, if one of the two can be weakened.

What of the fact that Abel was found just without this wound? That Enoch, we read, was taken up by God uncircumcised? That Noah, uncircumcised, while the flood raged, was appointed by divine providence heir and father to the human race? That Melchizedek, that high priest most acceptable to God, knew nothing of this scar? That the people of the Ninevites with their foreskin was freed by God's mercy? He would surely have commanded all of them to be circumcised if he had foreseen that circumcision of the flesh was necessary to the salvation of those he loved. Certainly he would have done so before with Adam himself.

But perhaps someone may say: was Abraham then a sinner, that he should be circumcised? Or just, and he should not have been circumcised? Abraham, brothers, was both a just man and yet necessarily circumcised. For what does Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.' Did it say, 'Abraham was circumcised, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness'? Since, then, Abraham was justified while uncircumcised, like Enoch and the others, and afterwards circumcised, it is plain that circumcision was not necessary for Abraham, but was procured as a sign of the Jewish people, which was to be carnal. In short, it brought him nothing: because he pleased God before, not after, he was circumcised; and he received the reward not of circumcision but of the promise earned in uncircumcision. Hence it is plain that Abraham bore in himself the type of a twofold people, so that the mark of circumcision should express the Jew, the righteousness of belief the Christian.

Add that this circumcision does not so much promise salvation as point out the place and head of the crime. For when Adam plucked the forbidden fruit with this member, he thus brought the law of death into the human race. So of necessity God gave this sign to a luxurious people, so that while it marks the place of the original fault, they might know that other crimes too must be fled. 'By your own mouth, Christian,' he says, 'you have been defeated. That is why I too maintain that I possess eternal life, because I recognise that a special cure for death has been given me by God.' The Jew would rightly say this, brothers, if this cure could have helped both sexes. Since the graver case remains, he recognises that he will perish unless he seeks the truth: for if it cures Adam, it certainly cannot by this remedy cure Eve, in whom lies the whole sum of the offence. What of the fact that I see it does not help even the man himself? Because the marking of this sign is subject to the power of the heart, and unless the heart has been purged by the spiritual sacrament of true circumcision, the man in question will perish for ever: for the flesh can suffer loss, but it cannot command the mind: for the mind, by the command of royal power, compels the body subject to it to fulfil the desires of its will in servile duties; and if it is vicious, a man can commit as many crimes as he has members.

In short, Scripture marks the Jews in this way, beginning from the ears: 'I called to them,' it says, 'and they did not hear; they will call to me, and there will be no one to hear them.' Likewise it speaks of the hands: 'For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with sins. Your lips have spoken wickedness, and your tongue meditates injustice.' And again of the other members: 'Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have acted deceitfully; the poison of asps is under their lips; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes.' And of circumcision itself it says, in signs: 'They inquired, and declared by their rods; they were led astray by a spirit of harlotry, and they have played the harlot away from their God.' Recognise then, Jew, even late, the wretched danger of your error, which must be blotted out, and tell us whether you observe circumcision or the law. If circumcision, the law is not necessary for you, because just Abraham, who lived by faith, earned God by belief, not by law. If the law, despise this circumcision of yours, which we see emptied by the law, as Jeremiah says: 'Thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and to all who dwell in Jerusalem: Renew newness among you, and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise the foreskin of your heart, lest my anger go forth like fire and burn, and there be none to quench it.' You see then, brothers, that God not only does not promise salvation to men circumcised in this way, but also, unless they are lawfully circumcised in heart, threatens the punishment of unquenchable fire. And Moses himself too, whose disciples they often claim to be, speaks to Israel in the same spirit, saying: 'In the last days God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to love the Lord your God.'

So now I will say to you again: Pharisee, answer, where do you have your heart placed? If in the region of the breast, why do you measure the lower parts with an ugly wound? If, as indeed you rightly suppose, in the lower parts, then beyond doubt you surpass all the sacrilegious, since, rejecting the saying of Moses, you presume that you can please God by this injurious coin of the body. 'Already,' he says, 'the second circumcision, which Moses announced, has been fulfilled in me through Joshua son of Nun at the Lord's command; for it is written: And God said to Joshua: Make for yourself very sharp knives of stone, and sit down and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time.' Let us see now, dearest brothers, in what manner that second circumcision by Joshua son of Nun was performed with those stone knives: did it circumcise the heart or the foreskin? For if, according to them, we too understand it carnally, both prophets will be held guilty: either Moses is a deceiver, if circumcision is circumcised again, so as to do the same thing, or to lose what it does not have; or certainly Joshua son of Nun is a murderer, if he cuts men's hearts with knives.

But far be it from us, brothers, to touch spiritual men with any error, especially since the prophecy has now reached the truth of its saying: for Joshua son of Nun bore the image of Christ, who is known to be the true saviour of all both by his deeds and by his name: for he, because he himself is also called the rock, rightly made stone knives (hence not without reason he also gave the name Peter to Simon, on whom he built the church), that is, he appointed as apostles and all his disciples men formed by his teaching and sharpened by the file of the Holy Spirit; and by their saving admonitions, with singing tongues, as with spiritual knives, he cut, according to Moses' saying, not the foreskin of the flesh of believing peoples to man's loss, but the foreskin of the wicked heart to man's increase.

But perhaps someone may still say: why did he himself also receive the seal of the flesh, if it was not necessary for him? Hear, brothers, what is the reason for this proposition. He who had come to give life to man through man had to fulfil all the edicts of the law, lest he be thought a phantom: for he could not have been either the end of the law or the true Christ if he had omitted anything that could have been given for men's salvation by another. Add that it was sung that according to the flesh he would be the son of David; and unless he had answered to the ancestral seal of his race, he would not be the son of David, nor could Christ have come except as the son of David. He was circumcised because he had been promised to the Jews; he was born with a foreskin because he was to be of benefit for ever to the uncircumcised nations.

We have spoken of the first, carnal circumcision, which is the Jews'; now let us briefly tell of the second, spiritual one, which is ours, which has so much power that it began from a woman, which was impossible for the first. Indeed, the cure of circumcision begins from the woman who had sinned first. And because the devil, creeping in by persuasion through the ear, had wounded and slain Eve, Christ, entering Mary through the ear, cuts away all the vices of the heart, and heals the woman's wound while he is born of a virgin. Receive the sign of salvation. Integrity has followed corruption, virginity has followed childbirth. Adam likewise is circumcised by the Lord's cross; and because both sexes had received death through the woman who alone had touched the deadly tree, on the other side the whole human race was given life through a man hung on the tree. And lest the beginning should seem not to be restored wholly to its state, the first man is consummated on the cross; and when he had happily fallen asleep, likewise from his side, by the blow of the lance, not a rib is torn away, but through water and blood, which is baptism and martyrdom, the spiritual body of a spiritual woman is poured out, so that Adam might lawfully be renewed through Christ, Eve through the church.

By this sacrament, brothers, men and women alike are circumcised; by this we are enrolled not with a mark but with the sign of the Holy Spirit. By this circumcision we lose nothing, but find that we grow with heavenly increase; we do not shed blood in a barren rite, but we keep the blood of modesty, which we often pour out eagerly when in persecution, for the name of the Lord, we lay waste the devil by dying. Finally we cut off what we ought not to have had, what we recognise as added to men by the enemy, as the Lord says: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds on top among the wheat.' These we necessarily tear up by the roots by circumcision, so that, cleansed of the contagion of the dire seed, we may remain whole in the abundance of the Father's seed. This, I say, given for man's salvation, is not driven away by day, nor night, nor hour, nor sex, nor age, nor condition, nor place, nor race, but is always found glorious in all. In short, the first circumcision cuts the flesh, the second cuts the vices of the mind; the first with iron, the second with the spirit; the first a portion, the second the whole man; the first only the male, the second both sexes; the first the foreskin of a little skin, the second the foreskin of all worldly lust. The first serves the eighth day; the second is served by seasons, days, hours and all moments. The first, before or after the eighth day, does not help even a dying boy; the second, from the very cradle of infancy to the last end of any age, imparts its saving gift to both sexes. The first rejoices in blood, the second in grace; the first in image, the second in truth; the first in loss, the second in gain; the first acts captive under the law, the second grants all the freedom of good faith in Christ. So you who are circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the stripping off of the flesh, but with the circumcision of our Lord Jesus Christ, labour that your integrity be not mutilated; lest the nakedness of sins creeping in again condemn your spiritual foreskin, as with Adam and Eve; lest the new man seem to have anything of the Jew or of the Gentile. For both of them are carnal, both without fruit. Hence there is no doubt that neither foreskin is anything, nor circumcision, but only the observance of God's will is necessary for those who live faithfully.

I should like, dearest brothers, to use a kind of triumphal speech and to double the sacred citadel of this new work with praises. But although it is best to praise the things that are God's, yet that is not the chief thing which can be common with Gentiles or Jews; for they too, if they were allowed or wished, might perhaps build synagogues more elegantly, raise capitols more elegantly; but in all these works, by true judgment, the builders can please more than the priests. What of the fact that there is no part, or hardly any, of a place of prayer throughout the whole church of God that can so far be compared in any way with the buildings of idolatry, which now sink into themselves by whatever ruin? For we have heard that the temple of Solomon too was built with splendid work, and so elaborated that the viewer did not know what in it to admire most, the size, the work, the ornament, or the material: for all things had so come together into one beauty that that perishable ambition was thought the lawful house of God. If this were so, it would always be found unequal in worship among the things mentioned.

But God protests that these worldly things, without a lawful and devoted worshipper, are neither sufficient nor necessary for his honour, saying: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet. What house will you build for me? Or what place for my rest? For my hand made all these things.' In the Gospel too he says thus: 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I wished to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! See, your house will be left to you.' And again: 'There will not be left in the temple one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.' So he rejects so immense, so distinguished, so rich a temple, because there was no true temple in it; for this weaving together of walls is a meeting place of men; but the faithful people is the temple of God, as the Apostle says: 'You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.' And it is true; for just as like temples suit senseless idols, so living temples are necessary for the living God; for in these alone the building of God's priests is both proper and perennial; in this we surpass both Jews and Gentiles and the rest. And it is an incomparable glory, and truly worthy of God, when with one consent, one faith, each commending the other, both priest and temple turn to God with like devotion. Rejoice then, brothers, and recognise your own building from this new building, whose capacity too you have made narrow by your happy numbers: for from the very fact that the place cannot hold us, it is understood that your faith holds God. So, lest anyone perhaps ask me about the work, I will set it out in a few words.

In the foundations of the whole building there are not, as in the temple of Judaea, many stones, but one stone, great, splendid, precious and beautiful, which alone supports the whole mass of the square tower: no countless and most powerful line of columns serves it in various ways, because seven alone suffice for it: no bronze sea is attached to it, because the living sea of its perennial font is in it: not a sea that makes shipwrecks, but one that leads the shipwrecked to sweet life: no gold, no silver; because it counts everything in its martyrs. It does not beg the light of windows, because the eternal sun remains in it. It has three inestimable members of one fullness, one sanctuary, and twelve gates always open, which a wooden beam, projecting in the shape of the letter Tau, defends from hostile assault. O thing truly to be wondered at! It is built daily and dedicated daily; it is adorned at every moment with perpetual flowers and various gems, stones and pearls; and because it is a living work, it has no roof but heaven.

I will tell besides what the daily wage is, what supply is provided. To all alike is given one bread with wood, water with wine, salt, fire and oil, a rough tunic and one denarius; and whoever gladly accepts it, and does not despise it once accepted, but perseveres in labour to the very end, will, when the tower is completed, dwell in it and possess inestimable riches.

It must necessarily also be recorded by whom each thing is done in the temple. The priest calls, belief opens the door, simplicity leads in, understanding invites, truth persuades, fear keeps watch, discipline restrains, continence reins itself in. Faith stands in the sanctuary, chastity in the secret place, innocence in front, equity in the middle, patience at the end. Peace gathers, love binds, care guards, justice distributes, devotion ministers, purity supplicates, the spirit asks, hope promises, wisdom, mistress of the house, bestows the gifts. Rejoice, elders, you are the supports of this work. Rejoice, young men, you are better than adamantine stones. Rejoice, children, sweet and priceless pearls of the sacred tower. Rejoice, happy marriages: you carve gems better than yourselves for its adornment. Rejoice, widows: by the squareness of your virtue you cling in union to the cornerstone. Rejoice, virgins: you adorn all this celebration with the honour of your flower. Rejoice, rich men, made truly rich by frequent and just bestowals: for this perennial praise of the divine work is owed to the advancement of your heavenly dignity. Rejoice, poor in spirit: through you and in you the house of God is greater: for you are equal to all, and you surpass all the measures of your body in extent. In short, the holy rich are few; you are many.

These, dearest brothers, are your gifts of grace; these the virtues by which the spiritual Jerusalem is built, by which this new place of sacred prayer and the people are daily made ready by the providence of Christ our God and Lord. This is our illustrious labour; this the glory of all priests; this a mystery to God, this a dear work, this living work is carried out in the flesh but advanced in the spirit. And God the almighty Father will grant that, as we give him thanks in this earthly dwelling, so in the heavenly kingdoms we may render him richer thanks with all the saints.

In every matter, dearest brothers, unless one first knows the person and the reasoning, one cannot know its truth; for this has made and makes the Jew, and the Christian worse than the Jew, not believe that the Son of God is God; I should like them to be present for a little while and lend an ear to the present reading, so that they might tell us who this God is who says: 'Hear, my people, and I will speak; Israel, and I will testify to you: for God, your God, am I.' And below: 'Mine is the world and its fullness. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High. And call upon me in the day of your trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will glorify me.' If it is the Father speaking, brothers, who is this to whom he defers so much? Who is the one he calls the Most High, since he alone is the one than whom none is higher? But if these are the words of the Son, deferring with all honour to the Father, you must recognise with what chains of darkness the mind of the unbelievers is bound and labours.

'Offer to God,' he says, 'a sacrifice of praise.' First of all, learn, new Christian, that there are three kinds of sacrifices, lest you be led astray by any error. One is detestable, another reprobate, the third clean. The detestable is the Gentiles', the reprobate the Jews', the clean the Christian people's. The sacrifice of the Gentiles, then, is as accursed as it is empty: for the vain worship vain fictions shaped into any forms, faces, sexes, ages, figured, at the loss of gold and silver, by the measured tooth of the mother file. What madness is this? To provide sacrifice for those who do not know, to bring light to the blind, to burn incense for those who do not breathe, to address prayers to the deaf; to ask protection from those whom the thief does not fear to fly off with. With them God is rightly angry, saying: 'Do not walk after other gods to serve them, and do not worship them, lest you provoke me in the works of your hands and I destroy you.' And what these works of human hands are the Holy Spirit declares in the ninety-fifth psalm, saying: 'All the gods of the Gentiles are demons; but the Lord made the heavens.' And in Deuteronomy: 'They sacrificed to demons and not to God.' And lest anyone think that sacrilege would go unpunished for him, Scripture says again in the same place: 'He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, unless to the Lord alone.' This divine sentence remains for the Gentiles unless they are converted; for they know that they have neither a lawful God nor a lawful sacrifice.

Now learn that the sacrifices of the Jews too have been repudiated by God, who says to them in the book of Isaiah: 'What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? I am full of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of lambs. I do not want the blood of bulls and goats: for who has required these things from your hands?' Through another prophet likewise the Holy Spirit cries out and says: 'Gird yourselves and lament, priests; mourn, all you who serve the altar: for sacrifice and offering have been taken away from the house of your Lord.' There is much that could be said; but it is quite idle to linger on things which no longer exist at all.

We shall necessarily bring forward one example which shows both that the Jew's sacrifice is hateful and the Christian's acceptable to God. In the prophet Malachi: 'I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord, and I do not accept a sacrifice from your hands; for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a clean sacrifice: for my name is great among the Gentiles, says the Lord.' 'Offer to God a sacrifice of praise.' Offer, he says, to God, not to demons, a sacrifice of praise, not of reproach, 'and pay your vows to the Most High.' He pours back the whole honour on the Father, from whom are all things. By saying 'And call upon me in your trouble, and I will rescue you,' he shows that he has carried out all things through himself. 'And you will glorify me': this saying, brothers, you must not take as if he testified that the praise of his work is owed to himself alone, he who says in the Gospel: 'If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if you will not believe me, believe the works, and know that the Father is in me and I in him'; said to signify the one majesty and the undivided affection of love; because the praise of the Son is the Father's, and the praise of the Father is both's.

Now it is fitting for us to know the property of our own sacrifice, which is easily recognised from its opposite: for if a bodily sacrifice suits bodily gods, surely a spiritual sacrifice is necessary for the spiritual God: one that comes not from the purse but from the heart; that is procured not with wintry beasts but with sweetest conduct; that is offered not with bloody hands but with clean senses; that is not slain so as to perish, but, like Isaac, is sacrificed so as to live, as the apostle Paul urges us, whose words these are: 'Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God': for this is pleasing to the Lord, when a pure mind has sacrificed itself to the Lord; but all else will be of no profit if the worshipper's mind is not pure, as Solomon cries in Ecclesiasticus: 'The Most High does not approve the gifts of the wicked.'

Here ask, Christians, whether your sacrifice can be acceptable, you who know every little clod, pebble and shoot of your neighbours' estates, but do not know the shrines smoking everywhere on your own estates, which (if the truth must be told) you subtly guard by pretending not to see. The proof is not far off. You go to law daily lest anyone take from you the rights of the temples. Not only those who are such displease God, but also those who run about among the tombs; who sacrifice banquets to the stinking corpses of the dead; who, for love of revelling and drinking, in disreputable places with flagons and cups have suddenly produced martyrs for themselves; who observe days; who make Egyptian days out of bright ones; who take auguries and seek their safety in the violently cut bellies of beasts; who make the marriage yoke bitter and, trampling on affection, waste the household property they should protect on substituted persons, to cover up the thefts of a most shameful profit, from love not of faith but of lust; who forcibly subject public women to themselves and show themselves viler than they are; who swell with anger, rage with lawsuits, give birth to slanders; who rob the poor, widows and orphans; who, neglecting God's way, contaminate the divine sacraments by calling others away with profane tales. Now let each see how he either receives or offers the sacrifice: for as offering unworthily is sacrilege, so eating unworthily is deadly, as Scripture says in Leviticus: 'Everyone clean shall eat the flesh. But the soul that eats of the flesh of the sacrifice of salvation, which is the Lord's, while his uncleanness is upon him, that soul shall perish from his people.' These things, brothers, as we must beware of them, so we must embrace, as you do, what is good, pure, simple, devout and holy: so that men seeing your good works may glorify your Father who is in heaven. So, my sweetest flowers, procure such sacrifices as the Holy Spirit may gladly offer, the Father approve, and the Son, who is our teacher, glory in when approved, through the same who is blessed for ever and ever.