Reply — Position 2

Secondly, you affirm with like confidence, that the covenant of circumcision is also the same, namely, the covenant of works made with Adam in Paradise.

This I utterly deny, and will try whether you have any better success in the proof of your second than you had in your first position. To convince you of your mistake, let us consider what the general nature of this ordinance of circumcision was, what its ends were, and then prove that it cannot be what you affirm it to be — the very same covenant God made with Adam before the fall — but must needs be a covenant of grace.

(1.) Circumcision in its general nature was (1.) an ordinance of God's own institution in the 99th year of Abraham's age, at which time of its institution, God renewed the covenant with him (Genesis 17:9-10). (2.) It consisted (as all sacraments do) of an external sign, and a spiritual mystery signified thereby. The external part of it (which we call the sign) was the cutting off the foreskin of the genital part of the Hebrew males, on the eighth day from their birth. The spiritual mystery thereby signified and represented was the cutting off the filth and guilt of sin from their souls, by regeneration and justification, called the circumcision of the heart (Deuteronomy 10:16). And though this was laid upon them by the command, as their duty, yet a gracious promise of power from God to perform that duty was added to the command (Deuteronomy 30:6): The Lord your God will circumcise your heart to love him, etc., just as promises of grace in the New Testament are added to commands of duty. (3.) Between this outward visible sign and spiritual mystery, there was a sacramental relation, from which relation it is called the token of the covenant (Genesis 17:12), the sign and seal of the covenant (Romans 4:11), indeed, the covenant itself (Acts 7:8).

(2.) Next let us consider the ends for which circumcision was instituted and ordained of God, of which these were the principal.

(1.) It was instituted to be a convictive sign of their natural corruption, propagated by the way of natural generation. For which reason this natural corruption goes in Scripture under the name of the uncircumcision of the heart [reconstructed: Jeremiah] 9:26.

(2.) It also signified the putting off of this body of sin, in the virtue of Christ's death (Colossians 2:11).

(3.) It was appointed to be the initiating sign of the covenant, or a token of their matriculation and admission into the church and covenant of God (Genesis 17:9-11).

(4.) It was ordained to be a discriminating mark between God's covenanted people, and the pagan world, who were strangers to the covenant, and without God in the world. And accordingly, both parties were from this ordinance denominated the circumcision and the uncircumcision (Colossians 3:11).

(5.) It was also an obliging sign to Abraham and his seed, to walk with God in the uprightness and sincerity of their hearts, in the performance of all covenanted duties, in which duties Abraham and the faithful walked obedientially with God, looking to Christ for righteousness. But the carnal Jews, resting in and trusting to those duties and ordinances for righteousness and justification, made it a covenant of works to themselves, and circumcision itself a bond of that covenant.

(6.) Now, inasmuch as circumcision prefigured Christ, who was to come of this holy circumcised seed of Abraham, and his death also was pointed at therein (Hebrews 2:16; Colossians 2:11), of necessity this ordinance must vanish at the death of Christ, and accordingly did so.

These things duly pondered, how irrational is it to imagine this covenant of circumcision to be the very same with the Paradisical covenant! Did that covenant discover native corruption, and direct to its remedy in Christ as this did? Surely it gave not the least glimpse of any such thing. Did that covenant separate and distinguish one person from another as this did? No, no, it left all under equal and common misery (Ephesians 2:3).

Had Adam's covenant a seal of the righteousness of faith annexed to it as this had (Romans 4:11)? He received circumcision a seal of the righteousness of faith. The righteousness of faith is evangelical righteousness, and this circumcision sealed. Say not it was to Abraham only that it sealed it; for it is an injurious restriction put upon the seal of a covenant, which extended to the fathers as well as to Abraham (Luke 1:72). But you admit however, that it sealed evangelical righteousness to Abraham. But I hope you will not say that a seal of the covenant of works ever did or could seal evangelical righteousness to any individual person in the world. So then, turn which way you will, this truth still follows you, and will fasten upon you: that the covenant of circumcision was not a pure covenant of works, but a gospel-covenant, which I thus prove.