obliged to walk before God, and be perfect ? Does not that also there alter the nature of the covenant, as well as here in the seventeenth chapter? You also grant, the covenant made with Abraham, Gen. xxii. was a pure gospel-covenant ; or if you deny it, the apostle proves it, Heb. vi. 1^5. And yet there is more appearance of respect to Abra- ham's obedience in that covenant, than is in submitting to circum- cision: see Gen. xxii. 16, 17. "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord ; for because thou hast done this thing, &c. That in blessing, I will bless thee; and in multiplying, I will multiply thee.'"*
I will trouble you, on this head, but with one quei-y more : if the four first verses of the xvii. of Genesis contain a pure gospel-covenant, as you say, and the restipulation in the following verses make a cove- nant of works, because it thereby becomes conditional ; then tell me, if you please, whether what God graciously granted to Abraham in the former verses be not all nulled, and made void again by their restipula- tion ? Does not this seem harsh ? Here you have brought Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the believers of Abraham's race, just into the same case you brought Moses and all the Israelites before, under two opposite covenants, where one cuts off all that the other granted.
But there is a stronger reason urged than the conditionality of the covenant, to prove it a covenant of works ; and that is, circumcision is made the condition of Abraham's covenant ; and that is the worst of all conditions, for it obliges a man to keep the whole law, Gal. v. 3. it is the yoke of bondage, and to whatsoever covenant it be so an- nexed, it makes it become a bondage legal covenant. " If we be circumcised, Christ shall profit us nothing." Thus it was in the covenant, Gen. xvii.
Great use is made of this in many parts of your discourse. But, sir, you are greatly mistaken in applying these texts to the purposes you do ; for the apostle all along in that epistle to the Galatians, argues against the false teachers, who taught and pressed the necessity of cir- cumcision, as a bond obliging them to the strict and perfect obedience of the law, in order to their justification thereby, or at least to join it with the righteousness of Christ, as a con-cause q/'justijicatf on ; see Gal. ii. 4, 5. and iii. 1. Now against this abuse of circumcision, it is that the apostle argues thus, and tells them, that in submitting to it on thai account, they made the deathof Christ of no effect, and obliged themselves by it to the whole law ; for circumcision did not simply and absolutely in the nature of the work or action, oblige men to the whole law in the way of justification by it, but it did so from the intention of the worker, and the supposition of such an opinion of it, and design in it; for in itself, and with respect to God's design in the institution of it, it was to be a seal of the righteousness of faith, Rom. iv. 11. and so it was an excellent, useful, instructive ordinance to all believers, as long as the ceremonial law stood : and even when it was expiring, as the gospel began to open more and more clearly, there
S46 A REPLY TO ME. CARV's SOLEMN CALL.
was yet some kind of toleration of it to such as were born of Jewish parents : Thus Paul himself circumcised Timothy, his mother being a Jewess, Acts xvi. 1, 3. but Titus, being a Greek, was not circum- cised, and that because of these false teachers, that would makean ill use of that their liberty. Gal. ii. 3, 4. This Paul could never have done, in case circumcision, in the nature of the act, had bound Timothy to keep the law for justification. By which it appears, that the action in its own nature did not oblige to the keeping of the whole law, but from the intention of the agent; and therefore, as the apostle rightly argues, if a man be circumcised with a design to be justified by it, he would thereby bind himself to the whole law, and frustrate the death of Christ to himself; but it was now to have its funeral with all other parts of the ceremonial law, which vanished, and were accomplished in the death of Christ; and it falling out that such a vile use was made of it at that time, the apostle thus thunders against it. Had this been observed, as also the like abuse of the moral law. you would have known how to have reconciled the apostle's encomiums of them both, with his sharp invectives against the one and the other. But being ignorant of these two great and necessary distinctions of the law, ac- cording to God's intention in the promulgation of it at Sinai, and the carnal Jews sense of it, as apure covenant of worlds ^ against which the apostle so sharply inveighs in the places by you cited, all your 23 arguments from page 183, to page 187, fall to the ground at one stroke ; your medius terminus having one sense in your major pro- position, and another in your minor ; and so every argument had four terms in it, as will easily be evinced by the particular conside- ration of the respective places from whence you draw them.
So in like manner, in your arguing here against circumcision, as a bond to keep the whole law, and as such vacating the death of Christ, isastumble at the same stone, not distinguishingas you ought to have done, betwixt an obligation arising out of the nature of the work, and out of the end and intention of the workers ; and this every learned and judicious eye will easily discern. But we proceed to
That which in its direct and primary end teacheth man the cor- ruption of his nature by sin, and the mortification of sin by the Spirit of Christ, cannot be a condition of the covenant of works ; but so did circumcision in the very direct and primary end of it.
This ordinance supposeth the fall of man, points to the means and instruments of his sin and misery, and also to the remedy thereof by Christ: (1.) It singles out that genital part by which original sin was propaj^jated. Gen. xvii. 11. Ps. li. 1. To this the sign of the covenant isapplied mcircumcision^ioY theremissionof sins past, and theextirpa- tion of sin for the future. (2.) Therefore it was instituted of God, hat men might see both the necessity and true way of mortifying
A RV.TI.Y to MR. CARY's SOLIIMN CALt. 34*7