If, then, someone does not receive—with great grace from God—the ability to understand the things spoken and done by the prophets, it will profit him nothing to seem to recite their sayings or the deeds, if he cannot also give an account concerning them. And indeed, the things said by those who do not understand them will seem contemptible to the many.
For if someone wished to examine you—asking why it was that Enoch and Noah together with his children, and any others of the kind there were, who were neither in circumcision nor kept the Sabbath, yet pleased God; what then is the reason that God should require, through other rulers and a law-giving after so many generations, that those from Abraham to Moses be justified through circumcision, and those from Moses through both circumcision and the other commandments—that is, the Sabbath and sacrifices and offerings of ashes and oblations—unless, as I have said before, you demonstrate that it was because God, being foreknowing, knew your people would deserve to be cast out from Jerusalem, and that none would be permitted to enter there.
For you are recognized from no other source, as I said before, than from circumcision in the flesh. Nor indeed was Abraham testified by God to be righteous on account of circumcision, but on account of faith; for before he was circumcised it is said concerning him thus: 'And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.'
And so we too, believing God through Christ in the uncircumcision of our flesh, and having the circumcision that profits us who possess it—that is, the circumcision of the heart—hope to be shown righteous and well-pleasing to God, since we have already been testified to by Him through the prophetic words. But that you were commanded to keep the Sabbath and to bring offerings, and that the Lord allowed a place to be called by the name of God, was so that—as has been said—you might not become impious and godless by serving idols and forgetting God, as you have always shown yourselves to have done.
And that it was for these reasons that God enjoined the commandments concerning Sabbaths and offerings, I have already demonstrated through what was said before; but for the sake of those who came today, I wish to take up again nearly all the same things. For unless this be so, God will be slandered, as though He had neither foreknowledge nor taught all men to know and to do the same righteous things (for many generations of men appear to have existed before Moses); and the word that says God is true and righteous, and all His ways are judgments, and there is no unrighteousness in Him, would not stand.
But since the word is true, and God wishes that you not always be such senseless and self-loving men, so that you may be saved together with the Christ who is well-pleasing to God and attested—as I said before, having labored to give the demonstration through the holy prophetic words.