Rightly do almost all the Doctors advise [that] the old circumcision, which the Israelite people held (Abraham [being its] beginner, Moses [its] legislator), can be called the former; but that [circumcision] which flourishes chiefly among Christians [is] the second — which the true JESUS not only commanded, and, by commanding, renews, but himself effects and works in our hearts. “In CHRIST you are circumcised,” says the Apostle (Coloss. 2 v. 11), “with a circumcision not made by hand, in the despoiling of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of CHRIST, buried with him in baptism.” St. Augustine (serm. 15, on the words of the Apostle, ch. 10): “We are circumcised.” Whence [the] circumcision? “From a rock.” What rock? “CHRIST.” But that the whole matter may be perceived more clearly, [it] will be permitted either to compare the whole Christian people to all who were before CHRIST, or to compare each [person] singly to himself. In the former way, baptism is wont to be called the “second circumcision.” But since I have called [it] an iterated circumcision — [one] which happens after a certain interruption — how was our circumcision ever [such], and how [was it] interrupted? First indeed, the spiritual circumcision was always [present], before Moses’s law, and in it [the law], as appears [in] Deut. 30, and from the thing itself. For how, unless human depravity circumcised the heart and senses, would men live piously and holily? Yet in many, both of the Israelites, and in almost all other nations, no circumcision of this kind was in use. All slackened the reins to lust, avarice, intemperance, and the other vices; they indulged themselves in all [things] most licentiously; they denied nothing to the mind ever coveting other and other pleasures, and grasping [them] from every side: in all [there] was mere foreskin, a mere impetus toward all crimes, and unbridledness. But when the fullness of time came, CHRIST JESUS laid on [his] hand: by his most holy grace, law, and life, he restrained the minds rushing to destruction; he took away disgraceful deeds; he cast down pride; he cut away lusts; the very occasions of sinning—
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—from the eyes, ears, and all the senses, he cut off and circumcised. And so the spiritual circumcision — interrupted in the Israelite people, and in others — [is], with our JESUS [as] author and helper, now recalled, and restored nearly to that use which [it] had in the most holy men of the old law. Nay, if we ascend higher, [there] was circumcision even in paradise — in that first state of an innocent, vigorous life, flowing with every pleasantness and delight — by which even the very stimuli to lust and disgrace, and the vicious motions [that go] beyond reason, were entirely absent from man. [There] was also no disease present; no hunger and thirst tormented [him]; no grief or calamity gnawed [his] mind. Adam rushed into sin; and this whole circumcision of all vicious things and evils came to an end. Can [it], then, ever be iterated and restored to us? Truly [it] is now, through the true JESUS, iterated and restored to us as regards a certain beginning; but as regards [its] perfection and completion, [it will be] one day — when, from the pilgrimage of this life, we shall have been led by that same our Leader and Saviour into the promised seats of the heavenly fatherland.
But if we compare each [person] singly to himself — behold, our former circumcision happens in the sacred reception of faith and of baptism. But [it] happens not rarely that — whether by the vices of adolescence, or by the fault of a bad upbringing, or by the wickedness of evil companions — this circumcision grows obsolete in us, and the foreskin grows up again. Then, indeed — our JESUS ever variously calling and rousing our hearts — the circumcision [is] to be renewed: the foreskin of lasciviousness, vanity, and idleness which has grown up [is] to be cut away. And this [is] to be done as often as we perceive ourselves “re-covered” from the former circumcision. Nay indeed, [it] is very useful, in the morning time, to institute a circumcision of certain and definite vices which cling to us more tenaciously — namely, by a firm resolution of the mind to beware of them, by prayers and the flight of all occasions [of sin]; but in the evening time to approach the other circumcision, through a diligent examination of conscience, true grief for the faults committed, [and] a serious entreaty of pardon from the divine mercy. [It] may be added [that] he who has already circumcised some more-imperfect [things] can — by advancing more and more day by day — circumcise more and more other [things], until he be perfect in the work of the Lord. Origen indicates [this] (homily 4), saying: “He who is learned in the law, and taught through Moses, [and who has] cast off the errors of idolatry, [and] laid aside the superstition and worship of images — this is the first circumcision, through the law. But if he [passes] from the law and from the Prophets to the Gospel faith, then he receives also the second circumcision, through the rock, which is CHRIST.” And in the last homily on this same book of Joshua, [Origen] explains [that], by the “stone knives” with which this second circumcision was made, [is] understood the word of God. St. Bernard (serm. 1, on circumcision): “What,” he says, “is our moral circumcision, but that which the Apostle commends (1 Tim. 6): ‘Having food and clothing, let us be content with these’? Most excellently does voluntary poverty circumcise us, and cut off all superfluous [things] — [voluntary poverty], the labor of penance, [and] the regular observance of discipline.” Rupert (on Joshua, ch. 16), more copiously: “Furthermore, naturally, of the second circumcision to us [there] is likewise such a cause. Of the second, I say — for, by believing in CHRIST—
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—[by believing in] Christ, and [being] baptized, we are circumcised with the first circumcision — the Apostle [being] witness, when he says: “In Christ you are circumcised with a circumcision not made by hand, in the despoiling of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, buried [with him] in Baptism, in which you also rose again through the faith of the operation of God, who raised him from the dead.” And this very [thing] he said, in the Gospel of Christ, not without the testimony of the law and the prophets. For the law says: “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, that you may love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul, that you may live.” And the prophet says: “Be circumcised to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your hearts, [ye] men of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem.” By the first circumcision, therefore, we are circumcised, and by the first resurrection we [shall] have risen — buried with Christ in Baptism, and despoiled in the works of the flesh, “in which you also rose again,” he says, “through the faith of God.” Such, therefore (as [was] foretold), is to us the cause of the second circumcision. We, the whole people of acquisition, who under the grace of CHRIST are born — nay, reborn — through all this time of the journey of the widest wilderness (that is, the life of the present age) are indeed circumcised with the first circumcision (of which [it] has already been spoken), but with the second circumcision [we are] not yet circumcised: because, namely, in the spirit of our mind we are indeed renewed, but in body, or flesh, we are still old, and daily [we know] old [things] — that is, we are still corruptible and mortal, and, by living, we daily journey more and more toward death. Whence the same Apostle: “The body indeed,” he says, “is dead because of sin, but the spirit lives because of justification.” The Lord, therefore, says to Joshua — I say, the Lord God the Father says to our Saviour, in that resurrection of him (of which [it] has been spoken): “Make thee stone knives, and circumcise the sons of Israel the second time.” The Saviour will do what is commanded, and will circumcise the sons of Israel “on the hill of the foreskins” — that is, in the resurrection of the dead. For, the trumpet sounding, the dead will rise incorrupt, “and we,” says the Apostle, “shall be changed.” “For all of us,” he says, “shall rise, but not all shall be changed.” And, expounding what [it] is to be changed: “For this corruptible must,” he says, “put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.” By this change, indeed, not all shall we be changed, for the Elect alone shall we rise to impassibility. Tertullian (in the book against the Jews, in the proof of the nativity of CHRIST): “The introduction into the possession of eternal life — than which nothing [is] sweeter — was to come about not through Moses (i.e., not through the discipline of the law), but through JESUS (i.e., through the grace of the new law), we being circumcised ‘with a stone edge’ — that is, with the precepts of CHRIST. For CHRIST [was] foretold [as] a rock, in many manners and figures.” [The thing] which, for another cause too, [I] cited before (bk. 1 ch. 1 q. 6). Lactantius (bk. 4 ch. 17, on the second circumcision to be fulfilled): “Isaiah prophesied thus: The Lord says these [things] to the men of Judah who dwell in Jerusalem: Renew among yourselves the newness, and sow not among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord your God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart, lest my wrath go forth like fire, and [there] be no one to extinguish [it]. Likewise Moses himself: In the last days the Lord will circumcise your heart to the loving of the Lord your God. Likewise JESUS son of Nave [Joshua], his successor: And the Lord said to JESUS: Make thee stone knives, exceedingly sharp, and sit, and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time — [thereby saying] that the circumcision to come would be not of the flesh (as the first was, which the Jews even now use), but of the heart and the spirit, which CHRIST handed down, who was the true JESUS. For the Prophet does not say thus, ‘And Jesus said to me,’ but ‘to JESUS’ — that he might show [that] he spoke not of himself, but of CHRIST, to whom then God [spoke]—
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—[to whom then God] spoke [in giving the name Joshua]. For that JESUS [Joshua] bore the figure of Christ.” And, a few [things] which were mentioned in the preceding book (ch. 2, quaest.) being interposed: “For that circumcision of the flesh,” he says, “lacks all reason [purpose]; because, if God had willed it, he would from the beginning have so formed man that [he] should not have a foreskin. But [it] was a figure of this second circumcision — signifying [that] the breast is to be laid bare, that is, [that] we ought to live openly and with a simple heart; since that part of the body which is circumcised has a certain likeness to the heart, and is a shameful [part]. And for this cause God commanded it to be laid bare, that by this proof he might admonish us not to have a wrapped-up breast — that is, that we might not will [to conceal] any shameful deed within the secrets of [our] conscience. This is the circumcision of the heart, of which the Prophets speak, which God transferred from the mortal flesh to the soul — which alone is the measure. For, willing to take counsel for our life and salvation according to his eternal love, he set before us penance in that circumcision — that, if we lay bare the heart (that is, if, having confessed [our] sins, we make satisfaction enough to God), we may obtain pardon: which is denied to the obstinate, and to those concealing their [own] deeds, by him who beholds not the face as a man [does], but the inmost [parts] and the secrets of the breast.” St. Jerome (bk. 1 against Jovinian): “Jesus [Joshua] the son of Nave [Nun] was before called Ause — or, as [it] is more correctly held in the Hebrew, Osee, that is, ‘Saviour.’ For he, according to the epistle of Jude, saved and led out the people of Israel from Egypt, and led [them] into the land of promise. This Jesus, as soon as he came to the Jordan, the marriage-waters which had always flowed in the law were dried up and stood [still]; and with dry and bare feet all the people passed through, and came into Gilgal; and there [was] circumcised a second time. Which [thing], if we take [it] according to the letter, cannot at all stand. For if we had a double foreskin, or if — the little skin being cut off — [it] were born again, rightly would a ‘second circumcision’ have place. But now this is signified: that Jesus [Christ], with the knife of the Gospel, circumcised the people which had come through the desert, and circumcised [them] with a stone knife; so that [that] which in the son of Nun [Joshua] was prefigured before, in a few, might, under Jesus [as] leader, be fulfilled in all. But the very foreskins, heaped together into one pile, and buried, and covered with earth — and the reproach of Egypt taken away — and the name of the place Galgala (which is interpreted ‘revelation’), show [that], while the people walked in [its] foreskin through the desert, its eyes were blinded [and now opened].”