circumcision was made the sign and seal, Genesis xvii, 7–14, was the
general covenant of grace, and not wholly, or even chiefly, a political
and national covenant, may be satisfactorily established. The first
engagement in it was, that God would “greatly bless” Abraham; which
promise, although it comprehended temporal blessings, referred, as we
learn from St. Paul, more fully to the blessing of his justification by
the imputation of his faith for righteousness, with all the spiritual
advantages consequent upon the relation which was thus established
between him and God, in time and eternity. The second promise in the
covenant was, that he should be “the father of many nations;” which we
are also taught by St. Paul to interpret more with reference to his
spiritual seed, the followers of that faith whereof cometh
justification, than to his natural descendants. “That the promise might
be sure to all the seed, not only to that which is by the law, but to
that also which is by _the faith_ of Abraham, who is the father of _us
all_,”--of all believing Gentiles as well as Jews. The third stipulation
in God’s covenant with the patriarch, was the gift to Abraham and to his
seed of “the land of Canaan,” in which the temporal promise was
manifestly but the type of the higher promise of a heavenly inheritance.
Hence St. Paul says, “By _faith_ he sojourned in the land of promise,
dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the
same promise;” but this “faith” did not respect the fulfilment of the
temporal promise; for St. Paul adds, “they looked for a city which had
foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” Heb. xi, 19. The next
promise was, that God would always be “a God to Abraham and to his seed
after him,” a promise which is connected with the highest spiritual
blessings, such as the remission of sins, and the sanctification of our
nature, as well as with a visible church state. It is even used to
express the felicitous state of the church in heaven, Rev. xxi, 3. The
final engagement in the Abrahamic covenant was, that in Abraham’s “seed,
all nations of the earth should be blessed;” and this blessing, we are
expressly taught by St. Paul, was nothing less than the justification of
all nations, that is, of all believers in all nations, by faith in
Christ: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the
Heathen by faith, preached before the Gospel to Abraham, saying, In thee
shall all nations be blessed. So then they who are of faith are blessed
with believing Abraham;” they receive the same blessing, justification,
by the same means, faith, Gal. iii, 8, 9. This covenant with Abraham,
therefore, although it respected a natural seed, Isaac, from whom a
numerous progeny was to spring; and an earthly inheritance provided for
this issue, the land of Canaan; and a special covenant relation with the
descendants of Isaac, through the line of Jacob, to whom Jehovah was to
be “a God,” visibly and specially, and they a visible and “peculiar
people;” yet was, under all these temporal, earthly, and external
advantages, but a higher and spiritual grace embodying itself under
these circumstances, as types of a dispensation of salvation and eternal
life, to all who should follow the faith of Abraham, whose justification
before God was the pattern of the justification of every man, whether
Jew or Gentile, in all ages. Now, of this covenant, in its spiritual as
well as in its temporal provisions, circumcision was most certainly the
sacrament, that is the “sign” and the “seal;” for St. Paul thus explains
the case: “And he received the SIGN of circumcision, a SEAL of the
righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised.” And as
this rite was enjoined upon Abraham’s posterity, so that every
“uncircumcised man-child whose flesh of his foreskin was not circumcised
on the eighth day,” was to be “cut off from his people,” by the special
judgment of God, and that because “he had broken God’s _covenant_,” Gen.
xvii, 14; it therefore follows that this rite was a constant publication
of God’s covenant of grace among the descendants of Abraham, and its
repetition a continual confirmation of that covenant, on the part of
God, to all practising it in that faith of which it was the ostensible
expression.
2. As the covenant of grace made with Abraham was bound up with temporal
promises and privileges, so circumcision was a sign and seal of the
covenant in both its parts,--its spiritual and its temporal, its
superior and inferior provisions. The spiritual promises of the covenant
continued unrestricted to all the descendants of Abraham, whether by
Isaac or by Ishmael; and still lower down, to the descendants of Esau as
well as to those of Jacob. Circumcision was practised among them all by
virtue of its divine institution at first; and was extended to their
foreign servants, and to proselytes, as well as to their children; and
where-ever the sign of the covenant of grace was by divine appointment,
there it was as a _seal_ of that covenant, to all who believingly used
it; for we read of no restriction of its spiritual blessings, that is,
its saving engagements, to one line of descent from Abraham only. But
over the _temporal_ branch of the covenant, and the _external_ religious
privileges arising out of it, God exercised a rightful sovereignty, and
expressly restricted them first to the line of Isaac, and then to that
of Jacob, with whose descendants he entered into special covenant by the
ministry of Moses. The temporal blessings and external privileges
comprised under general expressions in the covenant with Abraham, were
explained and enlarged under that of Moses, while the spiritual
blessings remained unrestricted as before. This was probably the reason
why circumcision was reënacted under the law of Moses. It was a
confirmation of the temporal blessings of the Abrahamic covenant, now,
by a covenant of peculiarity, made over to them, while it was still
recognized as a consuetudinary rite which had descended to them from
their fathers, and as the sign and seal of the covenant of grace, made
with Abraham and with all his descendants without exception. This double
reference of circumcision, both to the authority of Moses and to that of
the patriarchs, is found in the words of our Lord, John vii, 22: “Moses
therefore gave unto you circumcision, not because it is of Moses, but of
the fathers;” or, as it is better translated by Campbell, “Moses
instituted circumcision among you, (not that it is from Moses, but from
the patriarchs,) and ye circumcise on the Sabbath. If on the Sabbath a
child receive circumcision, that the _law of Moses_ may not be
violated,” &c.
3. From these observations, the controversy in the Apostolic churches
respecting circumcision will derive much elucidation. The covenant with
Abraham prescribed circumcision as an act of faith in its promises, and
as a pledge to perform its conditions on the part of his descendants.
But the object on which this faith rested, was “the Seed of Abraham,” in
whom the nations of the earth were to be blessed: which Seed, says St.
Paul, “is Christ,”--Christ as promised, not yet come. When the Christ
had come, so as fully to enter upon his redeeming offices, he could no
longer be the object of faith, as still to come; and this leading
promise of the covenant being accomplished, the sign and seal of it
vanished away. Nor could circumcision be continued in _this view_ by
any, without an implied denial that Jesus was the Christ, the expected
Seed of Abraham. Circumcision also as an institution of Moses, who
continued it as the sign and seal of the Abrahamic covenant both in its
spiritual and temporal provisions, but with respect to the latter made
it also a sign and seal of the restriction of its temporal blessings and
peculiar religious privileges to the descendants of Israel, was
terminated by the entrance of our Lord upon his office of Mediator, in
which office all nations were to be blessed in him. The Mosaic edition
of the covenant not only guaranteed the land of Canaan, but the
peculiarity of the Israelites, as the people and visible church of God
to the exclusion of others, except by proselytism. But when our Lord
commanded the Gospel to be preached to “all nations,” and opened the
gates of the “common salvation” to all, whether Gentiles or Jews,
circumcision, as the sign of a covenant of peculiarity and religious
distinction, was also done away. It had not only no reason remaining,
but the continuance of the rite involved the recognition of exclusive
privileges which had been terminated by Christ. This will explain the
views of the Apostle Paul on this great question. He declares that in
Christ there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision; that neither
circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but “faith that
worketh by love;” faith in the Seed of Abraham already come and already
engaged in his mediatorial and redeeming work; faith, by virtue of which
the Gentiles came into the church of Christ on the same terms as the
Jews themselves, and were justified and saved. The doctrine of the
non-necessity of circumcision, he applies to the Jews as well as to the
Gentiles, although he specially resists the attempts of the Judaizers to
impose this rite upon the Gentile converts; in which he was supported by
the decision of the Holy Spirit when the appeal upon this question was
made to “the Apostles and elders at Jerusalem,” from the church at
Antioch. At the same time it is clear that he takes two different views
of the practice of circumcision, as it was continued among many of the
first Christians. The first is that strong one which is expressed in
Gal. v, 2–4, “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised,
Christ shall profit you nothing; for I testify again to every man that
is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is made
of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are
fallen from grace.” The second is that milder view which he himself must
have had when he circumcised Timothy to render him more acceptable to
the Jews; and which also appears to have led him to abstain from all
allusion to this practice when writing his epistle to the believing
Hebrews, although many, perhaps most of them, continue to circumcise
their children, as did the Jewish Christians for a long time afterward.
These different views of circumcision, held by the same person, may be
explained by considering the different principles on which circumcision
might be practised after it had become an obsolete ordinance.
(1.) It might be taken in the simple view of its first institution, as
the sign and seal of the Abrahamic covenant; and then it was to be
condemned as involving a denial that Abraham’s Seed, the Christ, had
already come, since, upon his coming, every old covenant gave place to
the new covenant introduced by him.
(2.) It might be practised and enjoined as the sign and seal of the
Mosaic covenant, which was still the Abrahamic covenant with its
spiritual blessings, but with restriction of its temporal promises and
special ecclesiastical privileges to the line of Jacob, with a law of
observances which was obligatory upon all entering that covenant by
circumcision. In that case it involved, in like manner, the notion of
the continuance of an old covenant, after the establishment of the new;
for thus St. Paul states the case in Galatians iii, 19: “Wherefore then
serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed
should come.” After that therefore it had no effect:--it had waxed old,
and had vanished away.
(3.) Again: circumcision might imply an obligation to observe all the
ceremonial usages and the moral precepts of the Mosaic law, along with a
general belief in the mission of Christ, as necessary to justification
before God. This appears to have been the view of those among the
Galatian Christians who submitted to circumcision, and of the Jewish
teachers who enjoined it upon them; for St. Paul in that epistle
constantly joins circumcision with legal observances, and as involving
an obligation to do “the whole law,” in order to justification.--“I
testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to
do the whole law; whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are
fallen from grace.” “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of
the law, but by the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Gal. ii, 16. To all
persons therefore practising circumcision in this view it was obvious,
that “Christ was become of none effect,” the very principle of
justification by faith alone in him was renounced even while his divine
mission was still admitted.
(4.) But there are two grounds on which circumcision maybe conceived to
have been innocently, though not wisely, practised, among the Christian
Jews. The first was that of preserving an ancient national distinction
on which they valued themselves; and were a converted Jew in the present
day disposed to perform that rite upon his children for this purpose
only, renouncing in the act all consideration of it as a sign and seal
of the old covenants, or as obliging to ceremonial acts in order to
justification, no one would censure him with severity. It appears clear
that it was under some such view that St. Paul circumcised Timothy,
whose mother was a Jewess; he did it because of “the Jews which were in
those quarters,” that is, because of their national prejudices, “for
they knew that his father was a Greek.” The second was a lingering
notion, that, even in the Christian church, the Jews who believed would
still retain some degree of eminence, some superior relation to God; a
notion which, however unfounded, was not one which demanded direct
rebuke, when it did not proudly refuse spiritual communion with the
converted Gentiles, but was held by men who “rejoiced that God had
granted to the Gentiles repentance unto life.” These considerations may
account for the silence of St. Paul on the subject of circumcision in
his Epistle to the Hebrews. Some of them continued to practise that
rite, but they were probably believers of the class just mentioned; for
had he thought that the rite was continued among them on any principle
which affected the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, he would no
doubt have been equally prompt and fearless in pointing out that
apostasy from Christ which was implied in it, as when he wrote to the
Galatians.
Not only might circumcision be practised with views so opposite that one
might be wholly innocent, although an infirmity of prejudice; the other
such as would involve a rejection of the doctrine of justification by
faith in Christ; but some other Jewish observances also stood in the
same circumstances. St. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians, a part of
his writings from which we obtain the most information on these
questions, grounds his “doubts” whether the members of that church were
not seeking to be “justified by the law” upon their observing “days, and
months, and times, and years.” Had he done more than “doubt,” he would
have expressed himself more positively. He saw their danger on this
point; he saw that they were taking steps to this fatal result, by such
an observance of these “days,” &c, as had a strong leaning and dangerous
approach to that dependence upon them for justification, which would
destroy their faith in Christ’s solely sufficient sacrifice; but his
very doubting, not of the fact of their being addicted to these
observances, but of the _animus_ with which they regarded them, supposes
it possible, however dangerous this Jewish conformity might be, that
they might be observed for reasons which would still consist with their
entire reliance upon the merits of Christ for salvation. Even he
himself, strongly as he resisted the imposition of this conformity to
Jewish customs upon the converts to Christianity as a matter of
necessity, yet in practice must have conformed to many of them, when no
sacrifice of principle was understood; for, in order to gain the Jews,
he became “as a Jew.” See ABRAHAM, and BAPTISM.
CISLEU, the ninth month of the ecclesiastical, and the third of the
civil, year among the Hebrews. It answers nearly to our November.
CISTERN, a reservoir chiefly for rain water. Numbers of these are still
to be seen in Palestine, some of which are a hundred and fifty paces
long, and sixty broad. The reason of their being so large was, that
their cities were many of them built in elevated situations; and the
rain falling only twice in the year, namely, spring and autumn, it
became necessary for them to collect a quantity of water, as well for
the cattle as for the people. A broken cistern would of course be a
great calamity to a family, or in some cases even to a town; and with
reference to this we may see the force of the reproof, Jer. ii, 13.
CITIES. By referring to some peculiarities in the building, fortifying,
&c, of eastern cities we shall the better understand several allusions
and expressions of the Old Testament. It is evident that the walls of
fortified cities were sometimes partly constructed of combustible
materials; for the Prophet, denouncing the judgments of God upon Syria
and other countries, declares, “I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza,
which shall devour the palaces thereof,” Amos i, 7. The walls of Tyre
and Rabbah seem to have been of the same perishable materials; for the
Prophet adds, “I will send a fire upon the wall of Tyrus, which shall
devour the palaces thereof;” and again, “I will kindle a fire in the
walls of Rabbah, and it shall devour the palaces thereof with shouting
in the day of battle,” verses 10, 14. One method of securing the gates
of fortified places, among the ancients, was to cover them with thick
plates of iron; a custom which is still used in the east, and seems to
be of great antiquity. We learn from Pitts, that Algiers has five gates,
and some of these have two, some three, other gates within them; and
some of them are plated all over with thick iron. The place where the
Apostle was imprisoned seems to have been secured in the same manner;
for, says the inspired historian, “When they were past the first and
second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city;
which opened to them of its own accord,” Acts xii, 10. Pococke, speaking
of a bridge not far from Antioch, called the iron bridge, says, there
are two towers belonging to it, the gates of which are covered with iron
plates; which he supposes is the reason of the name it bears. Some of
their gates are plated over with brass; such are the enormous gates of
the principal mosque at Damascus, formerly the church of John the
Baptist. To gates like these, the Psalmist probably refers in these
words: “He hath broken the gates of brass,” Psalm cvii, 16; and the
Prophet, in that remarkable passage, where God promises to go before
Cyrus his anointed, and “break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in
sunder the bars of iron,” Isa. xlv, 2. But, conscious that all these
precautions were insufficient for their security, the orientals employed
watchmen to patrol the city during the night, to suppress any disorders
in the streets, or to guard the walls against the attempts of a foreign
enemy. To this custom Solomon refers in these words: “The watchmen that
went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the
keepers of the wall took away my veil from me,” Song v, 7. This custom
may be traced to a very remote antiquity; so early as the departure of
Israel from the land of Egypt, the morning watch is mentioned, certainly
indicating the time when the watchmen were commonly relieved. In Persia,
the watchmen were obliged to indemnify those who were robbed in the
streets; which accounts for the vigilance and severity which they
display in the discharge of their office, and illustrates the character
of watchman given to Ezekiel, and the duties he was required to perform.
If the wicked perished in his iniquities without warning, the Prophet
was to be accountable for his blood; but if he duly pointed out his
danger, he delivered his own soul, Ezek. xxxiii, 2. They were also
charged, as with us, to announce the progress of the night to the
slumbering city: “The burden of Dumah; he calls to me out of Seir,
Watchman, what of the night? watchman, what of the night? The watchman
said, The morning cometh, and also the night,” Isa. xxi, 11. This is
confirmed by an observation of Chardin upon these words of Moses: “For a
thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as
a watch in the night:” that “as the people of the east have no clocks,
the several parts of the day and of the night, which are eight in all,
are announced. In the Indies, the parts of the night are made known, as
well by instruments of music, in great cities, as by the rounds of the
watchmen, who, with cries and small drums, give them notice that a
fourth part of the night is past. Now, as these cries awaked those who
had slept all that quarter part of the night, it appeared to them but as
a moment.” It is evident the ancient Jews knew, by some public notice,
how the night watches passed away; but, whether they simply announced
the termination of the watch, or made use of trumpets, or other sonorous
instruments, in making the proclamation, it may not be easy to
determine; and still less what kind of chronometers the watchmen used.
The probability is, that the watches were announced with the sound of a
trumpet; for the Prophet Ezekiel makes it a part of the watchman’s duty,
at least in time of war, to blow the trumpet, and warn the people. The
watchman, in a time of danger, seems to have taken his station in a
tower, which was built over the gate of the city.
The fortified cities in Canaan, as in some other countries, were
commonly strengthened with a citadel, to which the inhabitants fled when
they found it impossible to defend the place. The whole inhabitants of
Thebez, unable to resist the repeated and furious assaults of Abimelech,
retired into one of these towers, and bid defiance to his rage: “But
there was a strong tower within the city, and thither fled all the men
and women, and all they of the city, and shut it to them, and gat them
up to the top of the tower.” The extraordinary strength of this tower,
and the various means of defence which were accumulated within its
narrow walls, may be inferred from the violence of Abimelech’s attack,
and its fatal issue: “And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought
against it, and went hard unto the door of the tower, to burn it with
fire. And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s
head, and all to break his skull,” Judges ix, 52. The city of Shechem
had a tower of the same kind, into which the people retired, when the
same usurper took it and sowed it with salt, Judges ix, 46. These strong
towers which were built within a fortified city, were commonly placed on
an eminence, to which they ascended by a flight of steps. Such was the
situation of the city of David, a strong tower upon a high eminence at
Jerusalem; and the manner of entrance, as described by the sacred
writer: “But the gate of the fountain repaired Shallum, unto the stairs
that go down from the city of David,” Nehemiah iii, 15.
CITIES OF REFUGE. See REFUGE.
CLAUDIUS, a Roman emperor; he succeeded Caius Caligula, A. D. 41, and
reigned thirteen years, eight months, and nineteen days, dying A. D. 54.
King Agrippa was the principal means of persuading Claudius to accept
the empire, which was tendered him by the soldiers. As an acknowledgment
for this service, he gave Agrippa all Judea, and the kingdom of Chalcis
to his brother Herod. He put an end to the dispute which had for some
time existed between the Jews of Alexandria and the other freemen of
that city, and confirmed the Jews in the possession of their right of
freedom, which they had enjoyed from the beginning, and every where
maintained them in the free exercise of their religion. But he would not
permit them to hold any assemblies at Rome. King Agrippa dying A. D. 44,
the emperor again reduced Judea into a province, and sent Cuspius Fadus
to be governor. About the same time the famine happened which is
mentioned Acts xi, 28–30, and was foretold by the Prophet Agabus.
Claudius, in the ninth year of his reign, published an edict for
expelling all Jews out of Rome, Acts xviii, 2. It is very probable that
the Christians, who were at that time confounded with the Jews, were
banished likewise.