[2.] This sting is deadly. As the biting of the fiery serpents could not be cured, but was present death till God found out a remedy, so this sting of sin is deadly : Kom. v. 12, ' By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned ; ' Gen. ii. 17, ' In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die ; ' dying thou shalt die : Eom. vi. 23, ' The wages of sin is death ; ' death temporal, eternal. Thou art a dead man, lost for ever, if thou art not cured. Those who were not solicitous about their cm'e are a figure of the impenitent, who obstinately continue in their sins though they bring destruction upon them. Not only death tem- poral, which consists in the separation of the soul from the body ; but death spiritual, which consists in an estrangement from God as author of the life of grace ; yea, death eternal, which consists in a separatioa
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both of body and soul from the presence of God for evermore, and is a perpetual living to deadly pain and torment. Tliis second death is set forth by two solemn notions, ' The worm that never dieth, and the fire that shall never be quenched,' Mark ix. 44 ; by which is meant the sting of conscience and the wrath of God: Prov. viii. 36, 'AU they that hate me love death.'
2. Christ is set forth by the brazen serpent. Here I shall show you — ■ (1.) The resemblances; (2.) The superexcellency of Christ above this, and all the shadows and types of him.
[1.] The resemblance between Christ and the brazen serpent.
(1.) The brazen serpent was a remedy of God's own prescribing out of his great mercy ; so is this remedy for lost sinners the mere fruit of God's love : John iii. 16, ' God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.' The causa irpoKarapKriKr), the occasion or outward moving cause, was our misery ; the causa Trporjyovfxevrj, the inward impulsive cause, was his own love and pity to lapsed mankind. God found out the remedy ; we neither plotted it nor asked it ; he saw the world of mankind was perishing, and involved in eternal ruin, and because there was no intercessor, therefore his own arm wrought out salvation. Herein the antitype differeth from the type. The stung Israelites, having death in their bosoms, go to Moses ; Moses goeth to God, for he saw there could be no help elsewhere ; then God said, ' Make thee a brazen serpent.' The motion came from them first, but here it is quite otherwise ; God is the offended party, yet he maketh the first motion : 1 John iv. 19, ' We love him because he loved us first.' There God found out the remedy, but here his mere love began the whole business, and did set at work all the causes that did concur to our salvation ; we neither minded our danger nor asked our remedy.
(2.) The conveniency of this type to set out the low estate and humi- liation of Christ. The form of a serpent was chosen to show that he came in such mean estate as if he were a worm and no man : Ps. xxii. 6, ' I am a w'orm and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people.' So also Isa. liii. 3, ' He w^as despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows, and acquainted w^ith grief ; and we hid as it were our faces from him ; he was despised, and we esteemed him not ; ' as a vile and abominable creature, both ' despised and rejected,' scarce deemed worthy the name of a man, or to have any converse or com- munion with them. It is the leavings off of men, as we would say, the very list and fag-end of mankind; so low and mean, that the nature of man can hardly descend lower : Mark ix. 12, ' The Son of man must suffer many things, and be set at nought ; ' it is i^ovSevcoOfj, made nought worth, or nothing. Once more, the serpent, of all the beasts of the field, was the creature which was cursed by God : Geuf iii. 14, ' Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field ; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.' Yet by this form would he represent Christ to the ancient church. God chose this to be a type of Christ, w^iich we would have thought a dishonour and disparagement to him. Yea, this serpent that was now set up was made of brass, not of gold, to show that Christ would not appear in glorious estate and majesty, but in the meanest and most abject form of any creature. All
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together will help us to meditate upon the great abasement of the Son of God. Qucmto vilior, tanto clarior nobis esse debet. The more he humbled himself, the higher estimation should we have of our crucified Lord. Never was any child of God before Christ under so much misery as Christ himself was. His own heaven, his own Father, his own Godhead, hid their face and consolation from him. God's wrath pressed the weight of punishment with the full power of justice both upon his soul and body ; those for whom he died despised him, he himself being emptied of all things that make men respected in the world, and depressed lower than ever any man was, as a worm to be trod upon. He was made the matter of common talk and reproach in all men's mouths ; condemned by the ruling part of the world, and set at nought by the basest of the people ; derided and scorned in his most holy behaviour, his bitter sufferings made a matter of sport and laughter, malice feeding itself with pleasure upon his pain and misery, and expressing itself with the basest signs of mockage which disdain could devise, flouting at his saving doctrine, and insulting over him as if he had been neither the Son of God nor an honest man. And all this was counted little enough for satisfaction of justice, exacting of him the due punishment of our sins. We tenderly resent contempt, and cannot endure to be despised and thrust down, when the Sun of righteousness went back so many degrees in the dial of honour.