[Trypho]. This is the very point about which it is right to doubt, that when ye endure sufferings of that kind ye do not also keep all the other things which we are now discussing.
[Justin]. The reason is that this circumcision is not necessary for all, but for you alone, that, as I said before, ye may suffer what you now are rightly suffering. For, again, we do not accept that useless baptism which is a matter of cisterns, for this has nothing to do with this baptism of ours, which belongs to life. Therefore God has also cried: Ye forsook Him, a living fountain, and ye dug for yourselves broken cisterns, which will not be able to hold water.
You, indeed, who are circumcised in your flesh have need of our circumcision, but we, possessing this, have no need of that. For if it were necessary, as ye think, God would not have formed Adam uncircumcised, nor would He have looked with favour upon the gifts of Abel who offered sacrifices in uncircumcision of the flesh, nor would Enoch in uncircumcision have pleased Him, and he was not, for God translated him.
Lot was saved out of Sodom without circumcision, when those very angels and the Lord led him forth. Noah, as the head of another race, entered into the ark together with his children, without circumcision. The priest of God most High, Melchizedek, was without circumcision, and he had tithes given him by Abraham as offerings, and Abraham was the first to receive the circumcision that is after the flesh, and was blessed by Melchizedek, after whose order God has announced by David that He would establish the eternal Priest.
To you therefore alone was this circumcision necessary, that the people may not be a people, and the nation not a nation, as also Hosea, one of the Twelve prophets, says. For, moreover, without keeping the sabbath all the righteous men who have already been named pleased God, and after them Abraham and all his sons until Moses, in whose time your people appeared plainly as unrighteous and ungrateful towards God, when it made the calf in the wilderness.
For this reason God accommodated Himself to that people, and commanded them to bring sacrifices, as unto His name, in order that ye should not commit idolatry. And not even this did ye keep, but offered your children also to demons. And He has for this cause charged you to keep sabbath, that ye may hold remembrance of God. For His word signifies this also, saying: to know that I am the God who redeemed you.