The great and admirable sacrament of Passover and of baptism we have long ago known to have been consecrated even in the Old Testament or Law. It is renowned from the ages, when blessed Moses was leading the Lord's people out of Egypt and from the yoke of unworthy servitude (Exodus 15); it is renowned that it was possible for him to make a passage for the people through the depth of the Red Sea, while the nature of things stood astonished. Here, in the first place, let us more diligently examine what such a servitude, or what such a passage, can bring toward edification: because, as the blessed Apostle says—'all these things were done for them in a figure'—he confirms by heavenly authority that the signs and miracles of that time pertained to the mysteries of the redemption to come. For thus he says:
'All our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.' For our benefits, therefore, even then, under the leadership of that people, the divine Power was campaigning on behalf of our advantages—rich already in benefits, but always in promises. Their leader indeed was blessed Moses, but it was the Son and the Holy Spirit who went before them in the pillar of light and of cloud. In this place let us above all recognize that the people which strives to hear its superiors follows God, and through God man arrives at salvation. Therefore the children of Israel, on their way to the seat of liberty and of rest and of the kingdom, through the difficult ways of the journey, while they do not resist the command of their leader Moses and their priest, merited God's escort. And not without cause did the enemy not touch them:
The Light went before, the waves took fright. So the Prophet testifies. 'And He rebuked,' he says, 'the Red Sea, and it receded' (Psalm 105 [106]). And again: 'The sea saw and fled' (Psalm 113 [114]). What did it see? That, then, which ought to be believed in baptism. Without doubt that terrible and secret deep shuddered at the majesty of the One standing by, and yielded to the presence of its own Author. And therefore the children of Israel pass safely either amid the waves or beneath the waves, when above them the steep masses of the vast whirlpools hung, with the floods suspended on right and left, while the insensible creature of the element, perceiving its Maker, offered a way flowing around those passing through, and, poured back again, prepared vengeance against those pursuing.
According to these things, if we too have left our vices and crimes as though Egypt, and if each one of us runs with intent heart after Christ, the same Christian, being a Hebrew, will not fear the Egypt that is the devil, the author of sin. For such is the nature and weakness of the enemy: as you withdraw, he gives way, and through your back, if you follow the Law of the Lord as your Moses, he enters. Behold the enemy, whom to have fled is to have conquered. Now first of all, that hardest tyrannical servitude of Egypt, what else did it present than the devil exercising over the human race the dominion of sins?
What else, I say, were those vile and dreadful commands of Pharaoh, concerning mud and straw, but the foul and earthly offices of diabolical pleasure, and the detestable contagions of the vices? Since indeed the fruitless and empty works of this life are straw. Straw, I say, a material all too friendly to flames. But this very thing too, that Pharaoh orders the little Hebrew boys to be killed and the females to be kept—clearly presenting the likeness of the devil, that hostile spirit, and friend of the flesh, envying virtue, consenting to pleasure—was choking off fortitude and nourishing concupiscences.
This servitude, therefore—which is worse—belonged not only to that time, but even now it enwraps the souls of the negligent and unbelieving, with the bonds of an alluring captivity, far more perilously. For by whom anyone is overcome, as the Apostle also testifies, of him he is also the slave: this one obeys injustice, that one wrath; this one pride, that one savagery; this one malice, that one anger; this one avarice, that one lust. I know not how anyone should dare to call himself free-born amid these things, whom so many masters drag apart into their own portions. What does it profit that a man is free by nature, who is a slave in conscience? We see ourselves outwardly exalted by the brightness of birth, inwardly degenerate through the weakness of mind—masters of the innocent, slaves of crimes.
Now better is the lot of home-born slaves, whom their original condition seems to have brought low. You have, good servants, your consolation: in exchange for liberty, embrace an honourable servitude. Intolerable is the yoke and foul the domination, and shameful the subjection. Or what hope is left to one who serves, where eternal death is joined to servitude? Without cause is he conspicuous outwardly, whether by birth or by honour, who is not inwardly free-born. With grievous condemnation are crimes repeated, after they have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. It is an inexcusable evil that, after the death of our Redeemer the Lord, a slave should be stained with sins.
If perchance the slave of any dear man is pressed by the harsh commands of his master, by fleeing or hiding somewhere he can escape and avoid his unjust master. The slave of sin, whither shall he flee? Whither shall he drag himself? Wherever he flees, he does not flee himself. There is no place for a bad conscience to go. It follows itself, nay, it does not withdraw from itself. What outward remedy can there be, when within there is an enclosed wound? What does it profit that a man flees the twanging bow, who carries the dart fixed within himself? That serpent, even if it withdrew its bite, left behind its venom. Each one committed sin that he might seize some pleasure. There remains what condemns, there passes away what delights. Iniquity consummated remains, fleeting pleasure passes by.
From this servitude, therefore, and from these enemies pursuing God's people even to the shores of baptism, Christ sets free innumerable thousands of captives through the watering of the sacred font, and crushes upon the waters the head of the great dragon. And thus that most savage dragon felt his own venom poured back to his own destruction and death; and while he thinks to do harm, while, blind, he makes his onset against his own Lord, and while he dashes the sting of his own torment against solid things, struck back by his own blow, he grieved that he had been strong, and knew that he had lost all power of harming, he who left the noxious bites of his venomous teeth in the sacred Body.
And therefore now he drags to his jaws, by the songs of his enticements, all the wretched whom he has foreseen will lend him easy assent, so that unarmed he may await a voluntary prey. And accordingly, laid low by the Lord, he assails the human race not as one stronger, but, as though weakened, he hisses out wicked counsels. That you may be able to escape his songs, from the oracles of God gladly hear the voice of the sacred Incarnation. Him Christ overcame not in His divinity, but in our flesh, that He might show that even by us he can be overcome. Him, I say, Christ slew through His saints. And perhaps this is that serpent which the rod of blessed Moses, turned into a serpent, consumed (Exodus 4).
By which kind He clearly showed even then, again by the rod—that is, by the royal power of Christ the Lord—that the author of death was to be crushed. So, while Moses was contending against the sorcerers, now the rod was turned into a serpent, now the serpent was turned back into a rod. What is this? In the serpent, recognize the person of the accursed man who, being about to be crucified, was accursed. In the rod, understand the sceptre of royal dignity. What is the rod into a serpent? The same God made man. What is the serpent into a rod? That man received into God. And thus in the man the divinity is emptied out, that in God the humanity might be glorified. We have still in the Heptateuch, under a simple and equal sign, the insignia of sacred redemption.
When in the desert the children of Israel were being laid low without any mercy by the venomous bites of serpents, we read (Numbers 21) that blessed Moses, warned by divine prompting, raised up a bronze serpent fixed upon wood in the midst of the warning crowds, and commanded the perishing that, after receiving the venomous stings, they should hasten to the presence of the serpent to receive health. As they took refuge there, health of healing was as ready to hand as the good fortune of looking was swift. A sure remedy followed under a momentary contemplation, because in the serpent there lay hidden a mystery. If we should say in this place that a species to be shunned displayed the type of the Name, who would not tremble at the very hearing of it?
But who would even dare to think this, unless He Himself had expounded the figure of the mystery—He who took upon Himself the outrage of the figure? He who by His own oracle testifies through the Gospel: 'As Moses,' He says, 'lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up' (John 3). Let us see, moreover, what the sight of a serpent against the venom of serpents means for itself. The serpent was from the beginning accursed. And He who was to be hung upon the wood, like the Saviour also, was filled with curses. For again it says: 'Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree' (Deuteronomy 21). We see what the serpent does against the serpent.
Likewise the condemned against the condemned, the accursed against the accursed, wisdom against cunning, goodness against malice, vinegar and gall against venom, death against death consuming the devourer, and slaying the slayer. So too the Lord Himself speaks through the prophet: 'O death, I will be thy death; I will be thy bite, O hell' (Hosea 13). But even now a remedy, if we will, is conferred on us against the serpent's bite by the sight of the serpent. This is then clearly fulfilled when sin itself is cured by the knowledge of that same sin, and the crime is abolished by the confession of the crime. And thus when a man says with the prophet: 'For I acknowledge mine iniquities, and my sin is ever against me' (Psalm
51), when he rightly regards his own sin, he heals the serpent's bite by the sight of the serpent. The serpent, therefore, against the serpent—that is, Christ pursuing sin under the guise of one about to sin. And therefore the Apostle said: 'And by sin He condemned sin in the flesh' (Romans 8). The same One blotted out original sin through flesh like sinful flesh, and out of sin crushed sin—that is, death out of death. Rightly did he call death by the name of sin, since it is agreed that the same was begotten out of sin. According to these things, that health which proceeds from the serpent is nothing else than the divinity lying hidden, as it were, beneath the flesh of sin.
Since these things are so, dearly beloved, looking within ourselves, if we perceive any wound, let us at once, fleeing from sin, take refuge in Christ. To Him let us lift the gaze of our hope; to Him let us direct the eyes of our mind. Moreover, of what sort this bite is, we ought to recognize. He who eyes another's evil, who sighs with anxious cupidity after another's property, who beholds another's wife with importunate eyes that draw death to himself, who sacrifices to the devil in another's body—he is stricken in the heart, his soul pierced with a poisoned dart: he is wounded with a bite as feeble as it is deadly. He who retains malice or envy like an enclosed wound in his vitals, is mangled by a most bitter and death-dealing tooth.
He who is empty of faith and full of hatred is wholly devoured by the bites of that dragon. Yet even should it be so, it befits no one to despair. We read in the prophet Jonah how the beast is compelled to vomit up even the one it has devoured. Therefore, amid the various bites, let us look to Christ, that He may look upon us. Here let us look to our Healer, who there is to be seen by sinners only, perhaps, in judgment. Or how shall anyone be able to see the Author of glory, when he is about to bid the last farewell to the things of nature? And so he who here has been unwilling to acknowledge Him, once acquired, will there no longer be able to conquer, being condemned. Now therefore let us set Him before our sight by faith and works, and let us hurl our eyes toward heaven, with hope leading the way.
In the Old Testament Moses showed the remedy after the serpent had bitten. Christ too has shown this: how, if you resist, it cannot bite. See how greatly the name of your God can avail in grace, since it availed so much in figure. It is recorded that they looked upon the serpent with the remedy of one who was to be redeemed. How much more healthful will it be, if those already redeemed look upon Christ!