And Trypho said: "This is precisely what is worth being puzzled about—that, while you endure such things, you do not also keep all the other observances about which we are now inquiring."
For this circumcision is not necessary for all, but for you alone, in order that, as I said before, you may suffer these things which you now justly suffer. Nor do we receive that useless baptism of the cisterns; for it is nothing compared to this baptism of life. Therefore God also cried out: "You have forsaken him, the living fountain, and have dug out for yourselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water."
And you who are circumcised in the flesh have need of our circumcision, while we who have this one have no need at all of that. For if it were necessary, as you suppose, God would not have formed Adam uncircumcised, nor would he have looked with favor on the gifts of Abel, who offered sacrifices while in uncircumcision of the flesh, nor would Enoch have been well-pleasing in uncircumcision—and he was not found, because God translated him.
Lot, uncircumcised, was saved out of Sodom, those very angels and the Lord escorting him out. Noah, the beginning of another race, entered the ark uncircumcised together with his children. Uncircumcised was Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High, to whom Abraham—the first to receive circumcision according to the flesh—gave a tithe of his offerings, and he blessed him; and God has declared through David that he will appoint the eternal priest after his order.
This circumcision, then, was necessary for you alone, so that the people might be no people and the nation no nation, as Hosea also, one of the twelve prophets, says. For indeed, without keeping the Sabbath, all those righteous men named before pleased God, and after them Abraham and all his sons down to Moses—under whom your people showed themselves unjust and ungrateful toward God in the wilderness, when they made the calf.
Therefore God, accommodating Himself to that people, commanded them to offer sacrifices as though to His name, so that you might not commit idolatry. Yet you did not even keep this command, but you even sacrificed your own children to demons. And He further enjoined upon you to keep the Sabbath, that you might retain the remembrance of God; for His word signifies this when it says: 'That you may know that I am the God who redeemed you.'