Romans 2:25-29 For circumcision truly profits, if you keep the law: but if you be a breaker of the law, your circumcision is made uncircumcision.… When Archdeacon Hare first visited Rome, some of his Protestant friends, it is said, who knew his love of art, and the personal sympathy which he had with the Eternal City, trembled for the effect it might produce upon his mind. These fears were groundless. Rome was all, and more than all, he had imagined. But the splendid vision left him a stronger Protestant than it found him. "I saw the Pope," he used to say, "apparently kneeling in prayer for mankind; but the legs that kneeled were artificial — he was in his chair. That sight was enough to counteract all the aesthetical impressions of the worship, if they had been a hundred times stronger than they were." Thus it is with all mere ritualism and other formalism — the legs which kneel are artificial. Parallel Verses KJV: For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. |
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