From these notions in antiquity, arose the strange humour of the ophite sect or heresy, who affirm the seducer serpent was the son of God. Epiphanius, Tertullian, St. Augustin and others speak of it. They kept a serpent in a box and worshipped it.
2. We are to consider the nature of forming of symbols. The serpent simply, as it was curs’d of God, and composite, as hanging on a tree, was symbolical of Christ: according to the sense both of Jewish and Christian writers.
We have seen the serpent in very advantageous light, which was in order to remove our prejudice, by the high notion its natural history presents us, to which much might have been added. But this is not necessary in the formation of symbols, for if we should think this a mean and contemptible animal, unworthy to convey to us so great an idea, I answer, it was one of the arts of the inventors of symbols and emblems, to picture out the highest things by what we may esteem the lowest subjects: a beetle, for instance, is the symbol of no less than what the heathen call anima mundi; and to picture out the greatest good by its contrary. Just as Isaiah in the prophetical style calls that most excellent prince king Hezekiah, by the name of dragon, basilisk, cockatrice, and fiery flying serpent, xiv. 26. This is understood not in regard to any pravity of his own disposition, but in regard to the enemies of God’s people, to whom he was as a dragon, a divine avenger against enemies, a protector of his own. Again consider the serpent as a prophylactick symbol, and the highest of sacred characters, thought most effectually to guard against and drive off all evil power. It was the method in making these prophylactick symbols, to take the figure of the thing we want to remedy. A most remarkable and apposite instance of this nature, is the famous brazen serpent erected by Moses, being suspended on a cross-pole, like that on which military banners are hung. They that were bitten by the fiery serpents, were order’d to look on this, and be whole. So that manifestly the symbol is to excite faith and obedience. They are the proper cure, not the intrinsick efficacy of the symbolical figure, Wisd. xvi. 6, 7.
All writers Jewish and Christian with one mouth assert, this was a type of the Messiah. Philo is in a rapture about it; supposes somewhat extraordinary, future, is meant thereby. Rabbi Moses Gerundinensis writes thus. “It seems to me, concerning this mystery, that ’tis agreeable to the course of the divine law, as to miraculous works, that the mischief should be remedied by a thing similar to that which caus’d it.” And it makes the miracle more illustrious and divine, that God should direct a snake to cure those bitten by snakes.
Others of the rabbin are of the same way of thinking, as David Kimchi, Michlol II. And Abarbenel upon the place, f. 305. And Nachmanides. Our Saviour applies the Mosaic serpent directly to himself; no wonder then that the Christian fathers do so. Christus veluti serpens in cruce pependit, says St. Ambrose. Moebius treats largely of this resemblance between Christ and the serpent, exercitatio de æneo serpente, p. 63. Highly honour’d was the serpent, that, as it had been the instrument of introducing the greatest evil to mankind, to it was directed God’s word when he promised to us the greatest good, the Messiah, imply’d in those words, Gen. iii. 15. He shall bruise thy head: αυτος in the LXX.
Another like case is that in 1 Samuel v. the ark of God was taken captive by the Philistines, and they dar’d to look into the venerable secrecy thereof. The nation was smote in the hinder-parts, the organs of generation, which the scripture modestly calls emerods, hæmorrhoidals. Moreover a terrible pestilence killed many, and a plague of mice at harvest-time came upon them, and devoured all the fruit of their ground. In order to make an atonement, they sent away the ark again, with golden figures of the emerods and mice, a present accompanying of costly jewels, as a consecrated λουτρον, or satisfaction to the God of the Jews. Here, by the way, we should be blind if we did not see the origin of the phallus among the heathen.
Therefore to apply this. In regard to the seeming difficulty we at first took notice of, paying such a regard to an animal which the ancestors of mankind had so much reason to detest. Did the devil injure us under the form of a serpent? The like figure is the properest of any to symbolize the remedy, the antidote against the poison whereby the devil wrought man’s fall. Therefore, naturally, the same is to symbolize the Messiah then promised, who is to work man’s redemption. And St. Athanasius, Tom. II. quæst. 20. scruples not to make a comparison between the union of the serpent and the devil, in the fatal temptation; to the union of the divine and human nature in our blessed Saviour. The venomous serpent is his human nature, sinful, infected by the devil’s treachery; he was made sin for us, tho’ not contaminated himself. Tho’ not venomous, he cures the venom of our nature. I observe that the rabbies, tho’ they saw sufficiently, how necessarily the Mosaic serpent was applicable to the Messiah, yet they were somewhat fearful therein, and of speaking their mind upon it, for fear of doing ill, in comparing him to an accursed animal. But our Saviour himself was not fearful in comparing himself to it, and the rather on that account, took it for a very express type of his crucifixion, and of his being accursed for our sakes, Deut. xxi. 25. John iii. 14. Galat. iii. 13, i. e. devoted as a sacrifice, an expiation, that we being freed from the curse of sin, might obtain the blessing of God. So our Christian writers explain the type between our Saviour and the brazen serpent in the wilderness. Bede in particular, on John iii. And here we see the nature of types, where a man that undergoes the curse and punishment of the law, becomes in reality a type of the Messiah. A serpent which pictures out the evil principle, the like, 2 Cor. v. 21. Assuredly Moses, by the holy Spirit, meant it to regard Christ’s crucifixion. A fit emblem of his divinity, thro’ that remarkable quality of their throwing off old age with their skin, and returning to youth again. For so the ancients thought:
Anguibus exuitur tenui cum pelle vetustas. Tibullus.
A fit emblem of his resurrection from the dead, and of returning to an immortal life.
TAB. XXXI.
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