When it is said, “The male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people, because he has broken my covenant,” Genesis 17:14 some may be troubled how that ought to be understood, since it can be no fault of the infant whose life it is said must perish; nor has the covenant of God been broken by him, but by his parents, who have not taken care to circumcise him. But even the infants, not personally in their own life, but according to the common origin of the human race, have all broken God's covenant in that one in whom all have sinned. Now there are many things called God's covenants besides those two great ones, the old and the new, which anyone who pleases may read and know. For the first covenant, which was made with the first man, is just this: “In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:17 So it is written in the book called Ecclesiasticus, “All flesh grows old like a garment. For the covenant from the beginning is, You shall die the death.”⁠a Sirach 15:17 Now, as the law was more plainly given afterward, and the apostle says, “Where there is no law, there is no transgression,” Romans 4:15 on what supposition is what is said in the psalm true, “I counted all the sinners of the earth transgressors,” except that all who are held liable for any sin are accused of transgressing some law? If on this account, then, even the infants are, according to the true belief, born in sin, not actual but original, so that we confess they have need of grace for the remission of sins, certainly it must be acknowledged that in the same sense in which they are sinners they are also transgressors of that law which was given in Paradise, according to the truth of both scriptures, “I counted all the sinners of the earth transgressors,” and “Where there is no law, there is no transgression.” And so, because circumcision was the sign of regeneration, and the infant, on account of the original sin by which God's covenant was first broken, was deservedly to lose what his birth gave him unless delivered by rebirth, these divine words are to be understood as if it had been said, Whoever is not born again, that soul shall perish from his people, because he has broken my covenant, since he also has sinned in Adam with all others. For if He had said, Because he has broken this covenant of mine, He would have compelled us to understand by it only this covenant of circumcision; but since He has not expressly said what covenant the infant has broken, we are free to understand Him as speaking of that covenant whose breach can be ascribed to an infant. Yet if anyone contends that it is said of nothing else than circumcision, that in it the infant has broken the covenant of God because he is not circumcised, he must seek some method of explanation by which it may be understood without absurdity (such as this) that he has broken the covenant, because it has been broken in him although not by him. Yet in this case also it is to be observed that the soul of the infant, being guilty of no sin of neglect against itself, would perish unjustly, unless original sin made it liable to punishment.