54. We can see from the following passages that circumcision represented purification from evils that are caused by strictly earthly love:

Circumcise your heart and take away the foreskin of your heart, so that my wrath will not break forth because of the ill will of your deeds. (Jeremiah 4:4)

Circumcise the foreskin of your heart and no longer stiffen your neck. (Deuteronomy 10:16)

To circumcise the heart or the foreskin of the heart is to purify ourselves from evils.

Conversely, then, being uncircumcised or having a foreskin refers to people who have not been purified from evils caused by strictly earthly love and who are therefore not devoted to caring, and since having a foreskin means being unclean at heart, it says that no one who is uncircumcised at heart or uncircumcised in the flesh is to enter the sanctuary (Ezekiel 44:9); that no uncircumcised person is to eat the Passover meal (Exodus 12:48); and that the uncircumcised are damned (Ezekiel 28:10; 31:18; 32:19).

85. Birth does not make anyone the neighbour more than another, not even when it is one's mother or father; nor does education. These are estimations from natural good. Nor does kinship nor relationship make anyone a neighbour more than another, thus country does not either. One's country should be loved according to the quality of its good; but it is a duty to do good to it, and this is done by having regard for its use, since one thus has regard for the welfare of all. It is not a duty to do good to other kingdoms outside that one, because one kingdom does not desire the good of another, but would like to destroy it as to wealth and power, thus also as to its protection. To love another kingdom more than one's own, therefore, by having more regard for its use, would be contrary to the good of the kingdom one is in; for which reason one's country should be loved in a higher degree.