4465. 'By circumcising every male among you' means a merely external representative, and then to them they would be pure. This is clear from the meaning of 'circumcising every male' as an external representative - the sign that they belonged to the Church, in this case to their semblance of religion, dealt with above in 4462. The fact that they would then be pure in their eyes follows from this, for the descendants of Jacob saw no purity or holiness in internal things, only in external ones.
