your holy temple, by despoiling yourselves who worship therein of holiness? (that treasure without which no man may appear before God,) Do you commit robbery upon robbery against him, entering not in at the door of truth yourself, and hindering God's people who would enter, thus robbing God of his people, robbing him of the right use of his temple, by converting it by your own dishonest practises into a den of thieves, robbing widows, and the poor in general, who are Christ's members. You that abhor idolatry as a robbery of God, are you guilty of these more than sacrilegious robberies?

You that cherish a haughty consciousness of.. the extraordinary distinction God has conferred upon your nation, by giving to it exclusively the law, do you dishonor that God, by transgressing his law? for the name of God on account.. of your practises, as the prophet foretold, is dishonored among the Gentiles. Circumcision, .... (which is a beneficial distinction, a seal of righteousness, if the conduct of the circumcised be in obedience to God,) has through your conduct like the term uncircumcision become a badge of reproach, a seal of shame, both to you and the religion you profess. Circumcision I say is become uncircumcision, from a term of honor it is become a term of reproach among the Gentiles.

If he then, on whom you bestow the epithet .. and term of uncircumcised, (considering it an epithet and term of reproach) observe those right rules of conduct, which are sanctioned by the law, shall not he (the uncircumcision as you call him,) be accounted as the circumcision, be invested with that glorious privilege, of which you are unworthy, the privilege of be longing to the peculiar people of God? Instead .. of his being brought to the bar of your pride and insolence, you yourself, who are of the law so far only as concerns the written form and the external sign, you yourself shall be the delinquent, and he, who is as nature formed him without that sign in the flesh, but who obeys the law, who obeys those rules of holiness, of which that sign is significant, he, the uncircumcised, shall become the judge to convict and condemn you. Hence the freedom and severity with which the Gentiles comment on your inconsistences, so injurious to the reputation of the religion you profess.

The true Israelite rests not in externals, he.. has that within him, which loves not exhibition. The genuine circumcision, he knows is of the heart, not a visible mark and character engraven on the flesh, but a secret mark or principle en- .. graven into the spirit, made not for the approbation of man, but God.

Conduct and not profession is the ground of hope for the man of God, faithfulness the only way to the favor of God, the only way for Jew or Gentile through Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ came into the world to point out to us that way; he went about doing good to encourage us in the pursuit of that way; he died upon the cross to draw all men into that way; and God publicly raised him to life everlasting, to show us the end of that way, the glorious rest to which it infallibly leadeth. For again, I repeat it, the righteous man, he who is righteous from faithfulness, and he only, shall live, the man in whom belief and practise constitute an indivisible unity.

What advantage then, as I have thus under- .. valued circumcision, you ask, have the Jews above others, and how is circumcision beneficial? I answer the Jews have unquestion- .. ably much advantage, and the institution of circumcision was of great use.

Super-eminent was the distinction conferred upon them in the trust of God's oracles; they were selected as a peculiar people to preserve those oracles in the world; venerating them themselves, and extending the knowledge of them among other nations. And has not circumcision, having that trust for its end or object, being a seal of that trust and a mark of distinc

tion, by which though dispersed among all nations, the Jews were always kept distinct, and separate to the service of the only true God fully answered the end of its institution?

But this view of the subject I am aware is liable to the following objection. The oracles of God have Christ for their end and object; and that portion of the Jews who crucified him plainly showed, that they did not venerate or believe those oracles. Circumcision therefore did not answer the end of its institution; and the Jews have no seal of distinction above others. The doctrine of the faithfulness of God to his promises of old, that in the seed of Abraham all the nations of the world should be blessed, a doctrine grounded upon the testimony of the Jews, is defective in its best support; as the Jews by their recent infidelity, on the very point to which they profess to bear testimony, prove themselves to be incompetent witnesses, and unworthy of credit. That God therefore will perform those promises we have no sufficient

assurance.

What shall their unfaithfulness annul the.. faithfulness of God? God forbid! God's truth... rests not upon the consistency or sincerity of certain of the Jews, or indeed of the whole Jewish nation: they have as a people performed their office; they have preserved God's oracles,

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and prepared the minds of all nations to expect a Saviour. Be it, that they are now convicted as liars, by their unbelief, and are become incompetent witnesses. The faithfulness of God depends no longer upon them for support, the oracles they preserved, the miracles and the life of Jesus, his death and resurrection are sufficient testimony to the truth of God. God is faithful through Christ, through the testimony of Christ, though all other his witnesses be found faithless; even that last consummation of judaical guilt the cross, by which the truth of God was tried, so far from impairing, redounded to his glory. That event proved God to be true, but all his accusers false, every man, the whole Jewish nation, to whom he had entrusted the office of attesting his truth, but who had become his accusers; that event proved them all to be liars, that God might be acknowledged as righteous, that is, as acquitted in his words, or as to the truth of his words, and that he might prevail when he was judged.

But if, says the Jew, our crucifixion of Jesus .. be viewed in this light, if our accusation of God have had so triumphant an issue to his glory, God will never punish us. If our unrighteousness, having brought to trial the truth of God, as we did by crucifying Jesus, and having been ourselves convicted, as we were on that trial to