[79] How, then, is a healing of their suffering brought about? By the making of another serpent, opposite in kind to that of Eve, namely the principle of self-mastery. For self-mastery runs counter to pleasure, a variable virtue to a variable affection, and a virtue that defends itself against pleasure its foe. So then God bids Moses make the serpent that expresses self-mastery, and says: “Make for thyself a serpent and set it upon a standard” (ibid. 8).
[80] You notice that Moses makes this serpent for no one else, but for himself, for God’s bidding is “Make it for thyself.” This is that you may know that self-mastery is not a possession of every man, but only of the man beloved of God.
We must consider why Moses makes a brazen serpent, no direction having been given him as to material. Possibly these are the reasons. In the first place, matter is not an element in God’s gifts making them to be of this or that sort; but the gifts of us mortals are always looked upon embodied in matter. A second reason: Moses loves excellences without bodily form, whereas our souls, being unable to get out of our bodies, crave for excellence in bodily shape.
[81] But the principle of self-mastery, being forcible and unyielding, is likened to the strong and firm substance of brass, perhaps also because, whereas the self-mastery found in the man beloved of God is most precious and like gold, that which is found in him who has absorbed wisdom by gradual progress holds the second place. Everyone, then, “whom a serpent shall have bitten, when he looks on it shall live” (ibid.). This is quite true. For if the mind, when bitten by pleasure, the serpent of Eve, shall have succeeded in beholding in soul the beauty of self-mastery, the serpent of Moses, and through beholding this, beholds God Himself, he shall live; only let him look and mark well.