Anno 1518.
Translated from Latin.
1. We readily admit that circumcision served to forgive original sin for the sake of God's appointment and because of Abraham's faith in Christ.
2. circumcision without faith of one's own or of others was of no avail, so that even to Abraham, the beginner, (principi)
of the same, without faith nothing would have helped.
3 It is much more correct to say that circumcision, as well as all other things, have benefited through faith, but not faith through circumcision or any other work.
*) This disputation was originally written in Latin and is thus found in the Theses collections of 1530, 1538 and 1558. - Then in the collections: in the Wittenberg, Dom. I, col. 58; in the Jena one (1579), Dom. I, 26 and in the Erlangen, opx. var. ars., vol. I, p. 382. German first in the Hallische Theile, p. 135 and in the Leipzig edition, vol. XVII, p. 157. We have retranslated according to the Jenaer.
1416 2- v- L-1- 383. iv. 3S2 f. 159. Luther's nine propositions on circumcision. W. xix, 1721-1723. 1417
4. it is believable that the women in the law, without circumcision, were justified by the faith of Abraham, who was circumcised.
005 And that the little children of this covenant were justified by strange faith, and not by their own circumcision.
6 Therefore circumcision did not help, but the sharing of Abraham's faith in Christ, which was promised to him, made him righteous.
7. circumcision has been a sign or a reminder, through which those who are
received it, were exercised by the Holy Spirit to the faith of Abraham in the future Christ.
(8) The fathers also keep such a sign before the law, either in the sacrifices or in the prayers.
9 So they were not justified by the power of the sacrifices, as the magister says, 1) which they understood spiritually, because one wanted to say that this understanding was the faith in the future Christ.
1) Magister SententiLimm, Petrus Lombardus.