A. Circumcision Removed Original Sin

343. It must be supposed here as certain that circumcision removed original sin; it is plain from the authority of the saints [nn.341-342].

344. And for this there is a fitting reason, because God at no time left the human race without a remedy necessary for salvation, especially those to whom he gave the Law so that, by observing it, they might attain to salvation. For such a Law would have been given in vain without such a remedy. Therefore, in the time of the Mosaic Law he gave some such remedy to those who observed that sort of Law. But they could not attain to salvation without deletion of original guilt (which is a supposition from Ord. II d.29 n.24); therefore God instituted some remedy against that guilt. This remedy, and nothing else, seems to be instituted there as such a remedy for guilt, according to Genesis 17.914, where circumcision was given to Abraham, and this many hundreds of years before the Mosaic Law was given on Mt. Sinai. But this does not prevent circumcision being a remedy for original sin. But that God wanted to institute it before the Mosaic Law argues that it was not a remedy belonging precisely to that law. But neither did the Law abolish it; rather it confirmed it.