That Circumcision was a Means of distinguishing the ISRAELITES from

B

other Nations.

UT I must now refume my observations upon Mofes's laws. Circumcifion was, without question, one of the first and most sensible means whereby God did diftinguish Jacob's posterity from all other people. I will therefore begin with it.

First, the very fignification of the word circumcifion, implies a real and corporeal distinction: even Tacitus understood it so, when he faith, Circumcidere genitalia inftituere Judæi ut diverfitate nofcantur (e). But befides, by it God's covenant was, as it were, printed and engraved in the very flesh of all Abraham's pofterity.

God has explained it thus himself in several places; and one may affirm, that this was very agreeable to God's design, which was, as we have intimated before, to hinder that people, from which the Meffiah was to be born, from mingling with the other nations of the world, which would have made the pedigree of the Meffiah suspected, or at least much more difficult to be traced.

I will not relate here, the several notions of divines about the use of that ceremony, but only content myself to make two very natural reflexions upon it.

The first of which is, that it was particularly in respect of the Meffiah, that God would have that mark made upon that part of man's body which is infervient to generation. As the Meffiah was to come into the world by generation, according to the words of the first prophecy concerning him, and also according to the further revelations of Gad to Abraham about that promise, so God could do nothing more agreeable to the idea the Ifraelites had of the Messiah, and of his birth, than to distinguish them, by a relation to that blessed seed which he promised them: as God designed, without all question, by that means to oblige the Jews to remember the first promife made to mankind; so, no doubt, he intended by it to fix their minds upon the confideration of that favour he had shewed to them as well as to Abrabam, to diftinguish them from all the people of the earth, that the deliverer of the world might be born in their commonwealth, and from one of their posterity.

The fecond reflexion is, that it was the same profpect to the Meffiah, which made God condemn those to death, who should either remain uncircumcised themselves, or leave their children so.

Is it not a very surprising thing, that so much rigour and feverity should be used in exacting the observation of a ceremony which was merely indifferent in its nature, and had no moral goodness in itself? But hereby it appears the more evidently, that God defigned that the use of circumcifion, by which he distinguished Abraham's pofterity from all

(e) Hift. 1. i

all other nations of the world, should be a kind of immovable bar, to hinder the Fows from mingling with all strangers.

Indeed there are three things which may be objected against these reflexions.

The first is, that it does not appear that this ceremony was counted such a proper sign of distinction, seeing the use of it hath been sometimes intermitted; as, for instance, when the whole nation of the Jews left it off for forty years in the wilderness.

The second is, that if the chiefest end of circumcifion was to diftinguish that people, with design to make the Meffiah known, there was no need that that yoke should be laid upon all the Jews, but only upon the family from which he was to descend, or at the most upon the tribe wherein that family was comprised.

The third is, that circumcifion was common both to Efau's and Jacob's posterity; and even used amongst the Egyptians, and the inhabitants of Golchis, as we may learn from Herodotus, and some other heathen authors.

But after all, it is an easy thing to fatisfy man's mind in all these appearing difficulties. I confefs that one is surprised to fee that God should not oblige the Jews to be circumcised in the wilderness; for which several reasons are given.

First, that God, being displeased with that generation, would not allow that they should be honoured with this token of his covenant: others say, that their journeying in the wilderness gave them a difpensation from the observance of that ceremony. But we may give a better, I think, and more natural account of that matter, if we do but follow the idea which occafioned my second reflexion.

The going forth of some Egyptians with the Ifraelites out of Egypt, was a type of the calling of the Gentiles, as I will shew fomewhere else: it was then necessary, that as all ceremonies, and circumcifion in particular, were then to be abolished, to take away all distinction from among Seth's posterity, so the use of circumcifion should at that time be fufpended.

However, God would not have the fufpenfion of that ceremony to continue till they were entered into the land of Canaan.

First, to prevent the intruding of fome Canaanites into the body of the Hebrews.

1

Secondly, to the end that these Ifraelites who were to enter into Canaan, being as well uncircumcifed as the Egyptians children, and being all made afterwards equal by circumcifion, should have no occafion to upbraid them with their different original.

The second objection may as easily be answered: one might think at first, that indeed the Meffiah had been more easily known at his coming, if the use of circumcifion had been enjoined only to the family, or at most to the tribe, from which he was to defcend: but befides that it had exposed that family, or that tribe, to great perfecutions, it had certainly much diminished that spirit of jealousy which was kept up by the conformity of the feveral pretenders, which on the other hand was of mighty use to preserve a distinct idea of the Messiah, and a defire of his coming.

As for the first objection, there is no difficulty in it: it is true, some Jewish interpreters imagine, that Joseph took occafion to prescribe the ufe of circumcifion to the Egyptians, after Pharaoh had commanded his people to do whatsoever Jofeph should bid them to do: but that conjecture is groundless; for it appears that the Egyptians who went out of Egypt with Mofes, were not circumcised. It is true, that nation did, fome ages after Mofes, take up the ceremony of circumcifion; and it is very likely that it was some Egyptian colony which introduced the use of it into Golchis: but the obiervance of that fole ceremony amongst those nations could cause no confufion, because none of them pretended to derive their original from Abraham, but had, as historians observe, quite different reasons from those which the Jews had for their practice of circumcifion.

As for the Ifmaelites and Edomites, the greatest part of the Jews are of opinion, that God did difcriminate their circumcifion from the circumcifion which was practised by those nations, by his institution of what they call the perigna after the circumcifion; which they endeavour to prove by a paffage in Joshua, wherein it is faid, that God ordered Joshua to circumcife again the children of Ifrael the second time. But others of them laugh at that criticism, because it appears that those words do relate to the second solemn circumcifion which that people did observe after their deliverance out of Egypt: therefore, without running to this anfwer, one needs only follow the idea we have already made use of, which is drawn from God's design of keeping up a spirit of jealousy, by some conformity betwixt the circumcifion practised by the Jews, and the ceremonies used amongst those rival nations.

Why then were some of the neighbouring nations of Canaan descended from Abraham, circumcised? As, for example, the Ifmaelites in Arabia, who were circumcifed at thirteen years of age; the pofterity of Abraham by Keturab, viz. the Midianites, who were in the country of Moab, and the Edomites, defcended from Efau, who did all practise circumcifion.

Certainly, it is evident, that as God set the Ifraclites in the midst of all those nations, who by virtue of their ancestors birthright, or fome other pretenfions, put in their claim with the Jews to the execution of the promise, on purpose to excite the attention of this people who were furrounded with these rivals, fo he did for the fame reason permit that the Ifmaelites, the Midianites, and Edomites, should practise the ceremony of circumcifion, almost in the fame manner that the Ifraelites did..

But that we may the better apprehend the force of this reflexion, we need only confider the jealoufy which is caused amongst the feveral fects of Chriftians, by the conformity of facraments; which is fo far from uniting them with one another, as it might justly be expected, that on the contrary, one may say, that this conformity in some things alienates them from one another, and breeds reciprocal jealoufies amongst their feveral parties, especially when they come to reflect upon the other controverted articles that cause the separation.

Moreover, it is reasonable to confider that God had provided a fufficient distinction betwixt that people and other nations, by giving them

many other laws, which had no other visible use than that of difcrimination; as, for instance, the three great feafts which the Jews were obliged to keep.

The feast of the passover was the memorial of the accomplishment of God's promise to Abraham to deliver his posterity out of the country wherein they were to be in bondage after 430 years; and confequently could not be observed by the Ismaelites, nor by the Edomites, who had never been captives in, nor delivered out of Egypt, in the fourth generation.

:

The Pentecost was a public monument of the promulgation of the law, and all its parts, amongst the children of Ifrael, and consequently peculiar to that nation.

Thus the feast of tabernacles preserved the memory of that folemn action of the Ifraelites continuance for forty years in the defert.

It were needless, after such remarkable diftinctions, to observe here, (which yet was certainly designed for that end) that God took care to diftinguish that people by some injunctions, which they were to observe, in the fashion of their clothes, of their beard, of their philacteries, of their mezouzoth, of their thaleth, of their zizith, and many the like things, the observance of all which served to hinder any confufion of the people of Ifrael with their neighbours.

That the Law of Moses engaged the Jews to the Study of their Genealogies, that they might certainly know that of the Messiah.

B

UT if God took care to diftinguish his people from all other nations by such an indelible mark, in the practice whereof there was no fear of any trick; feeing no man would circumcise himself without thinking upon it more than once, as the history of the Sichemites assures us; so one fees, that he took as great a care to divide them into tribes, and the tribes into families, that they might subsist and continue in a kind of a separation from one another, although they were at first but one single family, and one single nation.

Now to what purpose, I pray, were all those distinctions, if they had not been designed to manifest the Meffiah at his coming?

We fee then, that they could have no other use; for, as God had decreed that the Meffiah should be born out of the tribe of Judah, so it was necessary that the several genealogies of that tribe should be very publicly known.

And therefore one fees that God secured this, not only with all necessary care, but even with a caution greater than could have been reasonably defired.

He engages all the tribes of Ifrael to preserve with a kind of affecta

X 3

tion, their feveral genealogical tables; he neglects none of the means that might be useful to diftinguish the tribe of Judah from other tribes, and the family from which the Meffiah was to be descended from all the other families of the fame tribe.

Indeed I am not ignorant that anciently one might fee some other nations using the distinctions of tribes amongst themselves, much after the fame manner as the Jews did, and that they were careful to preferve their genealogies in order to derive their original from the fame common father; thus we ought to understand what we read in hiftory of the tribes amongst the Athenians. Thus Hippocrates runs up his own pedigree to the twentieth man of his ancestors, and Herodotus mentions several instances of the fame care.

But one fees that this affectation was infinitely greater among the Jews.

For we fee, that they did not only rank themselves every one under the standard of their own tribe, at their going forth out of Egypt, but that God did also engage every man to know his tribe exactly; nay, he compelled them all, in a manner, to study their own pedigrees, that every one might claim, and reap the benefit of the law of Jubilee, which had the force of an entail in refpect of every family, as I am now going to shew.

There are three things observable in that matter.

The first is, that it was by a superabundant precaution, that God would engage the tribes to continue distinguished from one another, and to preferve and study their several pedigrees; namely, he intended by that means to prevent the objection which might otherwise have been made, that it was impoffible for a tribe, and a family in that tribe, to continue diftinguished from the rest of the nation, for so many ages; for certainly, if all the tribes in that nation, and all the families in every tribe, did continue, by God's providence, so long distinguished from one another, there is no doubt to be made, but he could preferve the single tribe of Judah, and the family of the Meffiah, distinguished from all other tribes and families of the people of Ifrael.

The fecond remark is, that it was for this diftinction fake, that the books of the Old Testament were filled with genealogical tables: to what purpose else had books of that importance, and wich treated of fuch great fubjects, been filled with genealogies? Moses's books are fuil of them: the first book of Chronicles refumes those genealogies with all poffible exactness: there is nothing more confiderable in the book of Ruth, than the genealogy of David and his family.

The third remark is, that if the genealogy of the priests seem to have been better known than that of other families, by reason of their being the public minifters of religion, which seems to give the advantage of certainty of diftinction to the tribe of Levi above that of Judah, in that particular; yet we find, that all the families of the whole nation took. much the fame care to preserve their own genealogies; so that if, after the Babylonian captivity, fome particular perfons were excluded from the priestly order, to which they pretended, because they could not make out their pedigree, so likewife all were thrown out from the other tribes, that could not justify their lineal descent,

Nay,