For thus it is written, when Moses the lawgiver himself instructs the people against any assault upon the Law, saying: Hear, O Israel; keep the precepts of the Lord your God, and the testimonies and the ceremonies which he has commanded, and do what is pleasing and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with you, and that, entering in, you may possess that most excellent land which he swore to your fathers, so that he might destroy all your enemies before you, as he has spoken. When your son shall ask you tomorrow, saying, What mean these testimonies and ceremonies and judgments which the Lord our God has commanded us? you shall say to him:
We were Pharaoh's bondservants in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and he wrought signs and wonders, great and grievous, in Egypt against Pharaoh and all his household in our sight; and he brought us out from there, that, having led us in, he might give us the land concerning which he swore to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to perform all these statutes, and to fear the Lord our God, that it might be well with us all the days of our life, as it is this day. Likewise: The Lord your God has chosen you, that you should be to him a peculiar people of all the peoples that are upon the earth. Keep therefore the precepts and ceremonies and judgments which I command you this day, that you may do them.
If you keep them and do them, the Lord your God will also keep for you the covenant and the mercy which he swore to your fathers, and he will love you and multiply you; and he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your vintage, your oil and your herds, the flocks of your sheep, upon the land which he swore to your fathers to give to you. You shall be blessed among all peoples; there shall not be among you any barren of either sex, whether among men or among your flocks. He will take away from you all sickness, and the grievous infirmities of Egypt, which you have known, he will not bring upon you, but upon all your enemies. You shall devour all the peoples which the Lord your God is about to give to you. And again:
He will give the early and the late rain to our land, that you may gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil, and hay from the fields to feed your cattle, and that you yourselves may eat and be filled. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if only you hearken to his precepts. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, and the fruit of your cattle, the herds of your oxen, and the folds of your sheep. Blessed shall be your barns, and blessed your remaining stores. Blessed shall you be coming in and going out. He will bless all the works of your hands, and you shall lend to many nations, and you yourself shall borrow from none.
Behold, in the reward for fulfilling the Law, blessing is promised, as to men, so to the fruit of your cattle, to the herd of your oxen, and to the folds of your sheep; and no mention is made of any spiritual blessing of the soul, nor is anything which pertains to the salvation of the soul or to its damnation promised to those who obey or to those who transgress, but only earthly advantages or disadvantages are recalled to these people, while those which are greatest are altogether passed over. I ask also whether even now, after the Law has been given to us, the natural law can, as before, suffice for the salvation of some, that is, apart from those outward and proper works of the Law.
This indeed you can by no reason deny, since it is agreed that this Law was given to you alone, not to other peoples, and that circumcision was enjoined upon none but Abraham and his seed. And to his seed belong only those who are born of Isaac, the Lord saying to him: For in Isaac shall your seed be called. He also, after he had instituted the covenant of circumcision, added below: But my covenant I will establish with Isaac. Job too, a Gentile, who you do not doubt existed after Abraham without the Law, the Lord so commended that he said: That there is none like him on the earth, a man simple and upright, and fearing God, and departing from evil.
In setting forth to us through himself his own righteousness, which we are to imitate, he makes no mention of those works of the Law, but only of the works of the natural law, which natural reason itself persuades each one to do. If I have walked, he says, in vanity, or my foot has hastened in deceit; if I have denied to the poor what they desired, and have made the eyes of the widow to wait, and so on. These things he established for us Gentiles, by words as well as by examples, as a kind of law. But if these suffice for some unto salvation, whether before the Law or even now, what need was there to add the yoke of the Law, and by multiplying precepts to increase transgressions? For where there is no law, neither can there be transgression of it.
In what way did he, by giving the Law, constitute you a peculiar people, and by what reason does he name Israel his firstborn, whom he burdens with so great a load without cause? Who, moreover, could excuse you from the curse of the Law—you who, by reason of your sins demanding it, as you yourselves confess, have lost the land of promise, outside which you are by no means able to fulfill the Law? You who are neither permitted to exercise your judgments of justice, nor allowed to celebrate the very sacrifices or offerings instituted for the purging of sins, nor even to render the songs of divine praises. This indeed you yourselves confess, saying: How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
From which it is agreed that you have lost both the works of the Law and its words, as also its reward; nor can you now, like your wives, be cleansed, since your sacrifices and offerings are lost, nor be consecrated to the Lord, being deprived alike of the priesthood and the Temple; so that you have not even the consolation of earthly dignity—you who never ask anything of the Lord but earthly things, and who have received no promise of reward except in earthly things, as has been said. The Jew: You have raised many objections in succession, which are not easy to recall, so that I might answer each in order. Yet as these come to my mind, I shall try to respond.
Even if we should now also concede that men can, after the manner of the former saints, be saved by the natural law alone, that is, apart from circumcision or the other carnal observances of the written Law, yet it must not be conceded that these have been added superfluously; rather, they have great usefulness for amplifying and more safely fortifying religion, and for more fully restraining malice. Wherefore, from those very things which you yourself adduced, receive certain reasons. As long as the faithful, mingled everywhere among the unfaithful, lived together—and the Lord had not yet granted them a land of their own—by no observance of the Law were they set apart from those with whom they were compelled to live, lest the very dissimilarity of their manner of life should breed enmities.
But after the Lord had led Abraham out from his land and kindred, that he might give to him and to his seed a land for an inheritance, by which they might be separated from the nations, he decreed also to separate them utterly by the bodily works of the Law, so that the faithful might be the less corrupted by the unfaithful, the more they were severed from them both in place and in body. Wherefore, fittingly, when the promise of this land had been made to Abraham and his seed—in which the Lord would gather a people to himself and constitute, as it were, a city of his own—he began to instruct them in the Law according to which they were to live there, beginning with circumcision.
For the Lord knew that the neck of our people would be stiff, and that they would easily incline to idolatry and to the depraved customs of the Gentiles, as was afterward proved by the event itself. Wherefore, by the legal observances interposed like a kind of wall, he decreed so to sever their rites that they should be joined to the Gentiles by no fellowship of converse or familiarity—nay rather, that from this they should conceive perpetual enmities against one another. But the greatest familiarity among men is wont to be contracted by the bond of marriage and the sharing of the table. Wherefore, to remove these things above all, the Lord both instituted circumcision and forbade the eating of delicate foods.
For the sign of circumcision seems so abominable to the Gentiles that, if we should desire their women, they would by no means consent to us in this matter. Wherefore, even if there were other reasons, I believe these suffice for the present. But as for the fact that you labor to nullify or diminish the merit of circumcision or of the Law from the very authority of Scripture, I believe this can be refuted by Scripture itself, if you would diligently attend to those things which, by your silence, you seem to have stolen from the sequence of Scripture—things which, I believe, you saw would be harmful to you. For when the Lord himself instituted the covenant which is entered into with him through circumcision, he said to Abraham:
I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your seed after you in their generations, by an everlasting compact, that I may be your God and the God of your seed. For when he says, by an everlasting compact, "that I may be your God and the God of your seed," he plainly teaches us that from circumcision we are to be perpetually bound in covenant to God, and that through these things we win him as our God, so that neither in this life nor in the life to come are we severed from him. And this he himself repeats, that he may the more commend it to memory, adding: And my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant; so that, just as circumcision, once made in the flesh, can no longer be abolished, so in no wise can we be henceforth severed from God, who, specially strengthening us, says: You shall be to me for a people, and I will be to you for a God.
Wherefore he names himself in a special way the God of the Hebrews, not merely the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And it is indeed intimated that God became the God of Abraham and of his sons by reason of circumcision—he who, before circumcision, was called neither their God nor the God of men. Now he instituted circumcision as a fitting sign of the covenant between himself and us, so that those who are begotten by that member which is specially consecrated after the obedience of receiving circumcision, might be admonished from that very instrument of their generation that they are sanctified to the Lord; that thus they might be inwardly circumcised in heart from vices, just as they are already outwardly circumcised in the flesh;
and that from their preceding origin among the unfaithful Chaldeans they might cut themselves off in morals, just as they removed the first part of that member from themselves, going out from them with Abraham not so much in body as in mind, as David recalls when he invites the faithful soul thus: Forget your people and your father's house, and so on. Wherefore the Lord too, comparing his people to a chosen vineyard, complains that he expected it to bring forth grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. And as his whole people is compared to a vineyard, so individual believers are fittingly likened to vines, and their generative members to shoots. But the branch of the vine, unless it be pruned in itself, brings forth wild grapes rather than grapes, and remains uncultivated.
To this likeness, therefore, of the divine diligence in cultivating us, the cut-off foreskin points, from which God begins to cultivate us. But if you also recall the beginnings of human guilt in our first parents, and the sentence of punishment which the Lord pronounced upon the woman—when it is said to her, In sorrow you shall bring forth children—you will see also that the man, a partaker of the sin, was rightly made a sharer of the punishment especially in the generative member, so that he might rightly suffer in that very member through which, into the exile of the present life, he begets children destined to die, casting both himself and us alike from paradise by his own transgression into the hardships of this life.
For the woman too, laboring in childbirth, rightly suffers in that member by which she conceives and brings forth, and she is punished in the bringing-forth for that very pleasure of concupiscence which she has in conception, and she pays besides the penalty which she acquired by sinning. And since she sinned first and afterward drew the man to sin, not unfittingly did she also go before him in this punishment. Yet God did not altogether defer to punish the man himself, for whom a penalty was at once appointed, and it was said by the Lord: Cursed is the earth in your work; in labors shall you eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, and so on.
But when we obtained the abundance of the promised land, which no longer brought forth thorns and thistles, what was diminished there from the punishment was not unfittingly recompensed in circumcision. Yet this was begun at once by the patriarchs after the promise of that land, before it was obtained, so that it might transmit a firmer authority to those who came after. These things concerning circumcision I judge sufficient for the present. But you, who strive to prove from Scripture that it was enjoined only upon those who are descended from the seed of Abraham, do not observe what is written in that same place concerning those also who are not of this stock. For when the Lord had premised:
The infant of eight days shall be circumcised among you, every male in your generations; he that is born in the house, as well as he that is bought, shall be circumcised—he straightway added: And whosoever shall not be of your stock. Therefore, as for your asserting that Isaac alone and his seed pertain to circumcision, see how much discord this has, and correct yourself also from the very deed of Abraham. He too is recorded, by the Lord's command, to have circumcised along with himself Ishmael also, and all the men of his house, both those born in the house and those bought and the foreigners alike: At once, says Scripture, on that very day, as the Lord had commanded him—before Isaac had yet been born; so that you may know that you received it from us, and may claim it for yourselves as something all the more natural.
Now therefore, if it please, let us set down the very words of Scripture, which are of this sort: And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all the home-born servants of his house, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin, straightway on that very day, as the Lord had commanded him. And again: On the same day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son, and all the men of his house, both home-born and bought, and the foreigners were circumcised alike. As for what you also adduced—But my covenant I will establish with Isaac—wishing to understand this only of the covenant of circumcision, not of the earthly promise, nothing prevents it, even if it be granted, just as was premised a little before, where it is said: I will constitute my covenant with him for an everlasting compact, and with his seed after him.
For even though Ishmael too was circumcised by the Lord's command, the Lord did not establish circumcision in him, in whose posterity it did not endure. But as for your bringing forward Job the Gentile as an example—since you cannot prove him uncircumcised, nor that he existed after the institution of circumcision: for just as it is agreed that Ishmael was circumcised by Abraham, so too Esau and Jacob, and even the reprobate sons no less than the elect, were circumcised by the patriarchs according to the Lord's command, so that hence even their descendants, if any clave to God, might take the example of circumcision—just as you yourselves preserve it to this day, you who, imitating Ishmael your father, receive circumcision in your twelfth year.
We know also that our people had many proselytes converted from the nations to the Law, not so much by the imitation of parents as by a kindred virtue. And this could have happened in the case of Job too, whom we see, after our manner, offering sacrifices acceptable to God as much for his sons as for his friends. As for the further objection—that reward was promised for the observance of the whole Law only as temporal and earthly, and that the Lord did not plead providently for the persuasion or commendation of the Law, if the fulfillment of legal precepts does not merit eternal life—this is easily refuted, since from circumcision itself, which the Law commanded, we have been bound in covenant to the Lord forever, as I have said.
To what end also did he choose us out of all the nations to be a peculiar people to himself, and give us a Law by which we might be made holy, if only the joys of the present life—which the reprobate possess rather than the elect—were owed for the superadded observance of the Law? If holiness acquires for you, or for any men whatever, a blessed and immortal life, it is agreed that this is owed especially to us also from the Law, if its observance sanctifies us. And it does indeed sanctify, just as the Lord himself speaks to us through Moses, saying: If therefore you hear my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be to me a peculiar possession of all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.
How then did he choose us as a peculiar people and as his own, and sanctify us through the Law, if he makes you or others more blessed? And after some words, when he was exhorting us to obedience to the Law, he said: For I am your God, showing mercy unto thousands of those who love me and keep my precepts. But what is "showing mercy unto thousands" but showing mercy perfect and consummate, beyond which none can be extended, just as no new names of numbers exceed a thousand? And elsewhere: Be holy, for I am holy, the Lord your God. Likewise below: Sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy, the Lord your God. Keep my precepts and do them.
I am the Lord, who sanctify you. And after some words: You shall be my holy ones, for I am holy, the Lord, and I have separated you from the other peoples, that you might be mine. And again: I am the Lord, who sanctify you and brought you out of the land of Egypt, that I might be your God. And once more: If you walk in my precepts, I will set my tabernacle in the midst of you, and my soul shall not cast you off. And elsewhere: Who shall grant, he says, that they may have such a mind as to fear me and keep all my commandments at all times, that it may be well with them and with their children forever? Behold, openly the Lord declares an everlasting reward from obedience to the laws, not one that has an end.
Moses also, after that earthly reward which you mentioned above for those who keep the Law, added that mercy was furthermore to be fulfilled toward them by God, plainly promising us a reward other than the earthly. For when he had premised: And it may be well with you all the days of your life, as it is this day, he straightway subjoined: And he will be merciful to us, if we keep and do all his precepts, as he has commanded us. And, with certain words interposed, when he had said: The Lord has chosen you, that you should be to him a peculiar people of all peoples, he added below:
And you shall know that the Lord your God, he is the strong and faithful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to those who love him and to those who keep his precepts, unto a thousand generations. Now what perfect love of God or of neighbor—in which you say the natural law consists—the Law itself enjoins, I think does not escape you. For Moses, consummating the Law at the last, says: And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, but that you fear the Lord your God, and walk in his ways, and love him, and serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and keep the commandments of the Lord and his ceremonies, which I command this day, that it may be well with you?
Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth and all things that are in them; and the Lord was joined to your fathers and loved them, and chose their seed after them, that is, you, out of all peoples, as is proved this day. Now, to such a degree does the Law diligently express and amplify the love of God, that it be perfect, that it commands God to be loved with the whole heart and with the whole soul and with the whole strength of ours. But our neighbor we are bidden to love as ourselves, so that, namely, the love of God, extended even above ourselves, may be enclosed by no measure.
We are commanded also to love the very strangers sojourning among us as our own selves, and the Law itself opens so wide the bosom of love that not even to enemies or to those who do injury are its benefits lacking. Concerning these let us now bring forward some passages: If you come upon your enemy's ox or his straying ass, bring it back to him. If you see the ass of one who hates you lying under its burden, you shall not pass by, but shall lift it up with him. You shall not be troublesome to the foreigner, for you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt. You shall not seek vengeance, nor be mindful of the wrong of your fellow citizens. If a stranger dwells in your land and sojourns among you, do not reproach him, but let him be among you as a native, and you shall love him as yourselves;
for you yourselves were also strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. And elsewhere: There will not be lacking poor in the land of your habitation; therefore I command you to open your hand to your brother, and to the needy and the poor who dwell with you in the land. From these things, therefore, I beg you, weigh how far the Law extends the affection of love both toward men and toward God, so that you may recognize that your law also, which you call natural, is enclosed in ours; so that, even if the other precepts should cease, these, which are of perfect love, would suffice for our salvation as well as for yours.
And by these you do not deny that our former fathers also were saved, so that the more security of salvation is left to us, the more the other superadded precepts of the Law have established for us a stricter life. This addition indeed seems to me to pertain not so much to the religion of holy morals as to fortifying it more safely. For the true love of God and of men suffices for every virtue of the soul. And if works be lacking, yet a good and perfect will is by no means diminished in merit. But just as the Lord willed to separate us in place from the unfaithful, lest we be corrupted by them, so also he decreed that this must be done by the rites of works, as I have said.
Since therefore the perfection of love suffices to merit true blessedness, surely the superadded precepts of a stricter life ought at least in this life to obtain something more, so that, by the consolation of earthly benefit as well, we might be made more eager and more secure toward God; and that, as his gifts toward us were increased, our devotion toward him might grow; and that the external people of the unfaithful, who saw these things, might be more easily invited by our advantages to the worship of God.
But as for the fact that the Lord, in the reward of the Law, seems more often or more openly to commemorate earthly benefits than eternal ones, you should understand that this was done chiefly on account of the still carnal and rebellious people, whom he was leading out from the abundance of Egypt—over which they continually murmured—into a most harsh wilderness. It also seemed superfluous to commemorate anything in the promise concerning eternal blessedness, which it was agreed the former saints had attained even without the giving of the Law. Finally, gather how great is the perfection of the Law from this one conclusion, concerning which Moses, among his last words, writes thus: And now, Israel, hear the precepts and judgments which I teach you, and so on. You shall not add to the word which I speak to you, nor take from it. And again:
What I command you, this only do for the Lord; neither add anything nor diminish. For that is perfect to which nothing is to be added. Or, if anything of perfection were lacking, this prohibition would be evil, which prohibits what is lacking and blocks for us the path of blessedness. Why also does any law command anything to be done in sacrifices or other observances for our purification or cleansing and the pardon of our sins, if this pertains nothing to true blessedness? For nothing excludes from true blessedness those whose sins are forgiven. Otherwise that blessedness would not be hoped for by you either.
Why also does the Law forbid us sins, except to reserve for us that which sins, if they be absent, confer, and, if they be present, hinder? The Philosopher: I marvel that you, a man learned in the Law, speak so inconsiderately as to so exalt circumcision that you do not fear to lie, saying, namely, that only after circumcision and not before is God called the God of men, and of those only who had already been circumcised, just as God himself is called the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Wherefore the very Scripture of the Law openly reproves you, since Noah long before says: Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; let Canaan be his servant. Behold, indeed, Noah names God the God of Shem. Wherefore also, when it is said the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac or of Jacob, it is not unfittingly wont to be added:
and the God of our fathers. But if you also weigh the divine benefits, in which you especially glory as his peculiar people, see that Enoch was translated into paradise more happily than you were led into the land of Canaan. And this he is reported to have merited, when it is said: And Enoch walked with God, and was seen no more, because God took him. But that you obtained that land by your merits, Moses utterly denies, saying: Do not say in your heart, when the Lord has destroyed them: For my righteousness has he brought me in, that I should possess this land, whereas these nations were destroyed for their own impieties, that he might fulfill his word which he promised to your fathers.
Know therefore that it is not for your righteousnesses that God gave you this most excellent land, since you are a most stiff-necked people. But Noah, on account of his righteousness, when all men except his own household had been overthrown, was made lord of all things that are on earth or in the sea, and all things were granted to him for food except blood; so that, with respect to the earthly benefits of God which you have desired, the life of the former faithful was so much the more happy as it was freer and lord over all the creatures of earthly habitation.
Now, by as much as that life of Noah and his household was freer than yours — not yet, of course, oppressed by the yoke of your law — by so much also is ours freer, that more ancient life by which you cannot prove that we may be bound by any outward works of a harsh law. Let us then carefully consider those things, beginning from Noah himself, for whom the first law concerning abstinence from blood was instituted. Yet certain precepts of the law were extended even to foreigners — namely, only to those whom you held as house-born slaves or bondservants, or who dwelt with you within your gates or in your land.