As Presbyterians we say baptism mysteriously works blessing in the infants life as a sign and seal...
Actually, we don't really say that. I'm not trying to be harsh but our Confession does not state that baptism is an "unqualified" sign and seal to every person baptism. We confess that Baptism is a sign and a seal to the party baptized of a number of realities that belong to the elect along with the visible aspect of marking that person out from the world as belonging to the visible Kingdom of God. We qualify carefully, however, that the graces signified belong only to the elect and that the Spirit sovereignly grants them according to His pleasure. The sign and seal are, however, sacramentally related so that we need not put a wedge between the two but we also must be careful not to say too much about what an infant or an adult professor receives by the Sacrament of Baptism.
I appreciate Bruce's response (as I do all his contributions). I think that looking at what the Westminster Standards teach about Sacraments in general goes to answering your question. It outlines the nature of all Sacraments of the Covenant of Grace as having a sign and a seal to them. It adds the qualifier I just wrote about where the Spirit is the one who conveys the grace signified to those Whom He wills.
The Standards then teach that there were many Sacraments in the Old Covenant but that there are now only two in the New Covenant. The fact is, as Bruce noted, that women participated in some of these Sacraments that were signs and pledges to their creaturely capacity. God gives His people these signs not to make salvation certain, per se, but to accommodate what is already certain to our weak, creaturely capacity.
Hebrews 6 speaks about Abraham getting "double assurance". The first is that God cannot lie. The fact that God told Him he would be blessed and a blessing was enough to secure salvation. Abraham didn't get salvation by circumcision but he received a sign in His flesh of something that was already certain. He now had, as it were, two things that made him sure. It's sort of like saying that his assurance of the Promise was now Perfectly Perfect. It's not as if the extra Perfect makes the Promise more perfect but, as we go as creatures, it is something that we can cling to in our lives.
Thus, women did have Sacramental assurances given to them in the sacrifices and feasts (as they had opportunity to attend as they were not required). They were not devoid of Sacraments even if they did not have circumcision. Their salvation was no less certain than the males but they did not have a sign in their own flesh like the male. It didn't make God's Promise to them any less perfect but they simply lacked that added assurance. Given a stronger sense of family and corporate solidarity that we now lack, I think women may not have seen the circumcision of their husbands or fathers as something that another possessed but something they were, as it were, heir to themselves.
In any event, I think grasping the significance of Sacraments makes the problem a little less knotty. It's only when we make the Sacraments salvific of themselves and forget that they are means of grace and that faith is the instrument of justification that we wonder how women got along without circumcision in the OC.
