28. Trypho then said, " We have listened to you before, Justifi-
Circumcision breaks the sabbath in the letter.
used deceit, their throats are an ojyen sepulchre, the poison of Dial. asps is under their lips,destruction and misery are in their TjilllLi ways, and the ivay of peace have they not known.
So that as these commands were laid upon you at first for your sins, so hecause of your persistence in, or rather aggravation of them, God now calls you by a repetition of the same precepts to the remembrance and knowledge of Him.
But <:>^ you are a hard-hearted nation, foolish, blind, and lame, children in ivhom is no faith.
As He says Himself, Honour-Dent, ing Him only with your lips, while your hearts are far from ig'29* Him; teaching your own doctrines, and not His.
Tell ineis. again, did God desire that your high priests, who offered oblations on the sabbaths, or those who were circumcised Numb, themselves, and who circumcised others on that day, should ^{^^^^ commit sin ? since He commanded that circumcision should 12, 5. certainly be practised on the eighth day, though that were JV,^. 19, the sabbath ?
Could He not have commanded it to be done, for any that should be born, the day before or the day after the sabbath, if He knew that it were wrong to do it on that day? or why did He not teach those who lived before Moses and Abraham to observe the same laws, who are termed just men, and pleasing to God, though they were not circumcised, and observed not the sabbaths ?"
28. Trypho then said, " We have listened to you before, Justifiwhen advancing the same facts, and have given you due J'^j.^^^"!^ attention; and, to speak the truth, it is a matter worthy of Christ, attention; nor am I satisfied^ to say with the multitude, namely, that such was His pleasure, for this is always the common subterfuge of those who are unable to solve a question."
" Since therefore I bring my arguments and exhortations from Scripture and from facts," said T, *' do not delay nor hesitate to believe me, though I be uncircumcised ; for the time left for your conversion s is short, and if Christ should anticipate you in His Advent, you will repent and weep in vain, for He will not hear you.
Break Jer. 4, up your fallow ground, cries Jeremiah to the people, and ' Such is evidently the meaning, the Christian sense of ' proselytes/ in The text is corrupt, §. 23. p. 98, note b.
K vpo<jrjkv(T€ws, which rather favours