Things Pertaining to Their Ceremonial Law. The Sixth Sermon
IN my last sermon I spake of the holy persons, I mean, the ministers of God’s religion, the Levitical priests; and the place and time assigned to God’s service. There remaineth now for us to consider the holy thing which those holy persons did exercise in the holy time and place; I mean, the very worship and holy rites so ordained, taught, and prescribed by God himself, that all men might easily understand
[8 vocationem et, Lat., omitted; our calling and.] [+ veterem nimirum, ad terram viventium, Lat.; that is, the ancient]
[country, to the land of the living:—that is—faithful,’ is the translator’s]
[addition. ]]
how to do service, and what honour to give unto the Lord. In this treatise we have first to consider the Jewish sacraments, and then their sacrifices.
The ancient church of the saints had two especial sacraments; circumcision, and the paschal lamb. Of both which I will speak severally, and agreeably to the word of God, according to the grace which the Lord shall vouchsafe to give unto me.
ΝΟῪ circumcision was the holy action, whereby the flesh of the foreskin was cut away for a sign of the covenant that God made with men. Or, to describe it more largely, circumcision was a mark in the privy members of men, betokening the eternal covenant of God; and was ordained by God himself, to testify his good-will toward them that were circumecised, to warn them of regeneration and cleanness, and to make a difference betwixt the confederates of God and other people or nations.
The author, therefore, of circumcision is God himself: the beginning of it is of great antiquity. For the Lord himself C1810] In the gospel saith: “Circumeision began not at Moses, but at the patriarchs.” Moses verily did renew, or repair, the law or custom of circumcision; but Abraham, the renowned friend of God, was the first that was circumcised, in the ninetieth year! of his age, and in the very same day that God, making a covenant with him, did first ordain the use of circumcision. For he added circumcision as a seal to the league which he made with Abraham and with his seed for ever. The place is extant in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis. It was first ordained in the 2046 year after the creation of the.world, 390 years after the deluge, when Sem, the son of Noah, was 487 years old. So that Moses is found to have been born 320 years after the first institution of circumcision: whereby it appeareth, that circumcision was in use among the patriarchs 400 years before the law was given to the Israelites by the hand of Moses?
[! Nonagesimum nonum, Lat.; ninety years old and nine. Gen. xvii. 24.]
[2 According to Abp. Usher, these dates are as follows: Circumcision was instituted A.M. 2107, after the deluge 450 years, when Shem was 549 years old, before Moses’ birth 326 years, and before the giving of the law 406 years. But see Vol. 1. page 42, note; and The Old Faith, in works of Coverdale, Parker Soc. ed. p. 36.]
Now for because circumcision is added as a sign or seal to the league that was made betwixt God and Abraham, I must briefly, and by a short digression, touch the manner or order of that covenant. God, in making of leagues, as he doth in all things else, applieth himself to our capacities, and imitateth the order which men use in making confederacies. Men do by leagues, as by most sure and stedfast bonds, bind themselves to the society and fellowship of one body or people; in which society, to the end they may be the safer, and live more quietly from the wrongs and injuries of all other nations, they do mutually hazard both lives and livings, the one in defence of the other’s liberty. In these leagues they do precisely express what they be that make the confederacy, upon what conditions, and how far the covenant shall extend. And therefore, when God’s mind was to declare the favour and good-will that he bare to mankind, and to make us men partakers wholly of himself and his goodness, by pouring himself out upon us, to our great good and profit, it pleased him to make a league or covenant with mankind. Now he did not first begin the league with Abraham, but did renew to him the covenant that he had made a great while before. For he did first of all make it with Adam, the first father of us all, immediately upon his transgression, when he received him, silly wretch? into his favour again, and promised his only-begotten Son, in whom.he would be reconciled to the world, and through whom he would wholly bestow himself upon us, by making us partakers of all his good and heavenly blessings, and by binding us unto himself in faith and due obedience. This ancient league, made first with Adam, he did afterward renew to Noah, and after that again with the blessed patriarch Abraham. And again, after the space of four hundred years, it was renewed under Moses at the mount Sinai, where the conditions of the league were at large written in the two tables, and many ceremonies added thereunto. But most excellently of all, most clearly and evidently, did our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ himself shew forth that league; who, wiping away all the ceremonies, types, figures, and shadows, brought in instead of them the very i truth, and did most absolutely fulfil and finish the old league,