17:11) the “sacrament of circumcision.” This is it which is called the “old covenant” or “testament”; and containeth a contract between God and Abraham; by which Abraham obligeth himself, and his posterity, in a peculiar manner to be subject to God’s positive law; for to the law moral he was obliged before, as by an oath of allegiance. And though the name of “King” be not yet given to God, nor of “kingdom” to Abraham and his seed: yet the thing is the same; namely, an institution by pact, of God’s peculiar sovereignty over the seed of Abraham; which in the renewing of the same covenant by Moses, at Mount Sinai, is expressly called a peculiar “kingdom of God” over the Jews: and it is of Abraham, not of Moses, St. Paul saith ( Rom. 4:11) that he is the “father of the faithful”; that is, of those that are loyal, and do not violate their allegiance sworn to God, then by circumcision, and afterwards in the “new covenant” by baptism.