the Church filled by His Godhead, as he elsewhere saith, “of Him that filleth all in all” (Eph. i. 23.), and that the term “bodily” is here, as the body in the head. How is it then that he did not add, “which is the Church”? Some again say it is with reference to The Father, that he says that the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him, but wrongly.795 First, because “to dwell,” cannot strictly be said of God: next, because the “fullness” is not that which receives, for “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Ps. xxiv. 1.); and again the Apostle, “until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” (Rom. xi. 25.) By “fullness” is meant “the whole.” Then the word “bodily,” what did it intend? “As in a head.” But why does he say the same thing over again? “And ye are made full in Him.” What then does it mean? That ye have nothing less than He. As it dwelt in Him, so also in you. For Paul is ever straining to bring us near to Christ; as when he says, “Hath raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him” (Eph. ii. 6.): and, “If we endure, we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim. ii. 12.): and, “How shall He not also with Him freely give us all things” (Rom. viii. 32.): and calling us “fellow-heirs.” Then as for His dignity. And He “is the head of all principality and power.” (Eph. iii. 6.) He that is above all, The Cause, is He not Consubstantial? Then he has added the benefit in a marvelous way; and far more marvelous than in the Epistle to the Romans. For there indeed he saith, “circumcision of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter” (Rom. ii. 29.), but here, in Christ. Ver. 11. “In whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ.” See how near he is come to the thing. He saith, “In the putting” quite away,796 not putting off merely. “The body of sins.” He means, “the old life.” He is continually adverting to this in different ways, as he said above, “Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and reconciled us who were alienated,” that we should be “holy and without blemish.” (Col. i. 13, 21.) No longer, he saith, is the circumcision with797 the knife, but in Christ Himself; for no hand imparts this circumcision, as is the case there, but the Spirit. It circumciseth not a part, but the whole man. It is the body both in the one and the other case, but in the one it is carnally, in the other it is spiritually circumcised; but not as the Jews, for ye have not put off flesh, but sins. When and where? In Baptism. And what he calls circumcision, he again calls burial. Observe how he again passes on to the subject of righteous doings; “of the sins,” he saith, “of the flesh,” the things they had done in the flesh. He speaks of a greater thing than circumcision, for they did not merely cast away that of which they were circumcised, but they destroyed it, they annihilated it. 795 [“But wrongly” seems a necessary addition, though omitted by Field, doubtless because supported chiefly by the group of mss. found to make so many unwarrantable additions and other alterations.—J.A.B.] 796 ἀπεκδύσει, putting off for good, once for all. 797 ἐν, “in.” 503 Colossians 2:6,7