[There] are two opinions. One [is] of Calvin, on this place of Joshua (p. 21): [that it] is the forty-first Passover. [He] reckons, namely, [that] from the first Passover — which in Egypt, on the last night of its going-out, was religiously kept — [it] was thereafter repeated every year through the whole 40 years in the desert, and perpetuated up to this ingress into the promised land. His one reason is: because the Lord had commanded (Exod. 12 v. 24) [that] this ceremony be perpetual. “But,” [Calvin] says, “it is not probable [that] what God had lately ordered to be perpetual was suddenly cast aside. For [it] had been said to them: ‘The night is to be observed among the sons of Israel unto all their generations.’ How would [it] agree [that], two years after, [it] should have grown obsolete — [that] which ought to have been inviolable in all ages? Of which [it] would then have been such folly, to bury in so short a time the memory of a recent benefit?”
The other opinion is [that] of Abulensis (on Numbers ch. 9, quaest. 4, 5, & 6), of Ribera (on Amos ch. 5), [and] of Masius on this place — and thus [it is] the common [opinion] of all: [that] this [Passover] which Joshua, and the Jewish people, kept upon first entering into the promised land, was the third. For the first, as [was] already said, was in Egypt (Exod. ch. 12); the second, in the desert of Sinai, in the second year of the going-out from Egypt (Numbers ch. 9 v. 2 & following).
But throughout the following 39 years of the wandering, all Passover was omitted. [It] is proved. 1. To no one at all — not even to a newcomer and stranger — was [it] lawful to eat the Paschal victim, unless he were circumcised (Exod. 12 v. 48 & 49). But, as [was] shown above (in that chapter 5, q. 2), for the whole 40 years circumcision was omitted; therefore also the Passover — except [that] we may read [it] was done once, by the extraordinary command of God, in the second year of the Egyptian going-out (Num. 9). For indeed even boys, who by flesh could already partake of solid food, and by [their] little age eat, were made [participants] in the Passover, [as said] above (quaest. 22). But truly [they] would not have been made [participants], because thereafter, up to the circumcision here made in Gilgal, all remained uncircumcised. 2. The Lord expressly signifies [that] the ordinary and continual observation of the ceremonies which [he] had prescribed to that people was not necessary, except while [they] had entered the inheritance of the promised Canaanite soil (Deuteronomy ch. 12 v. 1); and specifically about the Passover itself, that [is] noted [in] Exod. 12 v. 25: “When ye shall have entered the land which the Lord will give you, as [he] has promised, ye shall observe these ceremonies” — namely, of the Passover and of the Unleavened bread. 3. The Lord would not have commanded (Num. 9) [that] the Passover be celebrated in that second year of the Egyptian going-out, if the Israelites had already been bound to its celebration by an ordinary precept. But [they] wish [it] then to be celebrated because the tabernacle [was] most recent [newly set up]—
(col. 600 — right column; printed “607”)
—the erection and dedication of the tabernacle [being in] Exod. [40], [and] Num. 1 & 7; the consecration of the priests and Levites, in the same place. And because, in the Sinaitic desert, on account of the nearness of the Midianite land — from which Moses’s father-in-law Jethro had come (Exod. 18) — [they] could have all things for the sacrifices and the paschal ceremony more conveniently than in the solitudes and other places of the wandering. 4. In Amos ch. 5 v. 25, [it] seems to be signified clearly enough [that there] were no ordinary sacrifices in the desert. But the Passover is a sacrifice (above, quaest. 18 & following). “Did ye,” says the Lord in the cited Prophet, “offer to me victims and sacrifice in the desert [for] forty years, O house of Israel?” And St. Stephen recites the same (Acts 7 v. 42). And thus that place [is] understood by St. Jerome, Theodoret, and Rupert (on Amos), [and] Bede (on Acts 7).
[It] is proved, finally, from the response to Calvin’s one reason. For, first, the Passover ought [indeed] to be perpetual — but, namely, when [they] had come to the promised seats of the Canaanite [land], not in the very journey (as [was] proved in the second reason a little before). Then: [was] the Passover more commanded than circumcision? [Was] this [Passover] less perpetual than that [circumcision]? Was [it] not said to Abraham too by the Lord (Gen. 17 v. 8): “I will give to thee, and to thy seed, the land of thy wandering,” etc. “And thou, therefore, shalt keep my covenant, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant which ye shall observe between me and you, and thy seed after thee” (v. 12): “The infant of eight days shall be circumcised among you, every male in your generations.” And (v. 14): “The male, the flesh of whose foreskin shall not have been circumcised, that soul shall be blotted out from his people.” Nevertheless, although [it] was so seriously and firmly, and as [it were] perpetually, commanded, [it] was interrupted — and indeed rightly, as [is] plain (q. 3) — throughout the whole time and place of the journey. Why, therefore, [was] the Passover not similarly interrupted? Why [was it] more perpetuated? And just as the omitted circumcision put no fault on the Israelites, so neither [did] the omitted Passover. For [it] was not done by folly, or by forgetfulness or contempt of the divine benefits, but by reason of the journey and the ever-uncertain movement — by the will of God himself too, and by Moses’s interpretation. The third, therefore, [was] the Passover kept in the stations of Gilgal.
Yet [it is] not altogether empty [vain], that [suspicion] which [Calvin] touches — without any name of anyone — (p. 88). Masius [thinks] there seems [to be] a suspicion, and therefore [that] Calvin wishes the Passover [to have been] celebrated by the Jews without circumcision, so that [he] may hint [that] the Eucharist can be approached by Christians without baptism — since here [Calvin holds that], for salvation (according to his opinion and impiety), [baptism] is not necessary, but predestination alone is enough, and generation from holy seed.