(53) His disciples said to Him, "Is circumcision beneficial or not?" He said to them, "If it were beneficial, their father would beget them already circumcised from their mother. Rather, the true circumcision in spirit has become completely profitable."

(15) And the child on the eighth day ye will circumcise, every male throughout your generations, him that is born in the house, or whom ye have bought with money from any stranger, whom ye have acquired who is not of thy seed.

(15) And every one that is born, the flesh of whose foreskin is not circumcised on * the eighth day, belongeth not to the children of the covenant which the Lord made with Abraham, but to the children of destruction ; nor is there, moreover, any sign on him thathe is the Lord's, but (he is destined) to be destroyed and slain from the earth, and to be rooted out of the earth, for he hath broken the covenant of the Lord our God.

He labored even on the Sabbath for the sheep that he found fallen into the pit. He saved the life of that sheep, bringing it up from the pit that you may understand fully what that Sabbath is, you who are the children of the understanding of the heart. It is a day in which it is not fitting that salvation be idle, so that you may speak of that heavenly day that has no night and of the sun that does not set because it is perfect. Say then in your heart that you are this perfect day and that in you lives the light that does not fail.

(15) And the uncir- cumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin on the eighth day,* that soul will be cut . off from his people, for he hath broken My covenant." I5.a And God said unto Abraham : "As for Sarai thy wife, her name will no more be called Sarai, but Sarah will be her name.

(1) Whence the law was rightly said to have been given by Moses, being a rule of fight and wrong; and we may call it with accuracy the divine ordinance (qesmos, inasmuch as it was given by God through Moses. It accordingly conducts to the divine. Paul says: "The law was instituted because of transgressions, till the seed should come, to whom the promise was made." Then, as if in explanation of his meaning, he adds: "But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up," manifestly through fear, in consequence of sins, "unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed; so that the law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we should be justified by faith." The true legislator is he who assigns to each department of the soul what is suitable to it and to its operations. Now Moses, to speak comprehensively, was a living law, governed by the benign Word. Accordingly, he furnished a good polity, which is the right discipline of men in social life. He also handled the administration of justice, which is that branch of knowledge which deals with the correction of transgressors in the interests of justice. Co-ordinate with it is the faculty of dealing with punishments, which is a knowledge of the due measure to be observed in punishments. And punishment, in virtue of its being so, is the correction of the soul. In a word, the whole system of Moses is suited for the training of such as are capable of becoming good and noble men, and for hunting out men like them; and this is the art of command. And that wisdom, which is capable of treating rightly those who have been caught by the Word, is legislative wisdom. For it is the property of this wisdom, being most kingly, to possess and use, It is the wise man, therefore, alone whom the philosophers proclaim king, legislator, general, just, holy, God-beloved. And if we discover these qualities in Moses, as shown from the Scriptures themselves, we may, with the most assured persuasion, pronounce Moses to be truly wise. As then we say that it belongs to the shepherd's art to care for the sheep; for so "the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep;" so also we shall say that legislation, inasmuch as it presides over and cares for the flock of men, establishes the virtue of men, by fanning into flame, as far as it can, what good there is in humanity.

(3) To illustrate: the noble apostle circumcised Timothy, though loudly declaring and writing that circumcision made with hands profits nothing. But that he might not, by dragging all at once away from the law to the circumcision of the heart through faith those of the Hebrews who were reluctant listeners, compel them to break away from the synagogue, he, "accommodating himself to the Jews, became a Jew that he might gain all."

(50) The man who doetli any of these things on the Sabbath shall die, so that the children of Israel shall observe the Sabbaths accord- ing to the commandments regarding the Sabbaths of the land, as it is written in the tables, which He gave into my hands that I should write out for thee t lie laws of the seasons, and the seasons according to the division of their days. 6 Forbidden; Exod. xxxv. ; cf. Num. xv. f. Forbidden by the Jewish oral law.

(15) This law is for all the generations for ever, and there is no circumcision of the days, and no omission of one day out of the eight days;* for it is an eternal ordinance, ordained and written on the heavenly tables.

(15) And now I announce unto thee that the children of Israel will not keep true to this ordinance, and they will not circumcise their sons according to all this law ; for in the flesh of their circumcision they will omit this circumcision of their sons, and all of them, sons of Beliar, will leave their sons uncircumcised as they were born.

(2) Declare and say to the children of Israel the law of this day both that they should keep Sabbath thereon, and that they should not forsake it in the error of their hearts; (and) that it is not lawful to do any work there- on which is unseemly, to do thereon their own pleasure,* and that they should not prepare thereon anything to be eaten or drunk, jand (that it is not lawful) to draw water, or bring in or take out thereon through their gates any burden, | which they had not 1 viz. the Sabbath. * viz. Jacob. after their oyon pleasure above. For the law about " bringing in or taking out . . . any burden " on the Sabbath, cf. ii. ,