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to meliorate the condition of man by meliorating his principles: while, on the other side, we occasionally behold a strange hostility to revelation, not only displayed in certain popular productions, but loudly applauded by the mob of the metropolis when a public opportunity has been afforded them of expressing their sentiments. If such be the case in England, we have reason enough to fear, that the spirit of Antichrist is very far indeed from being extinct on the continent. The noisome and grievous sore may be skinned over; and, through the circumstance of its being falsely healed, it may present a fair outward appearance: but the virus yet remains undischarged, and occasionally shews itself by actual eruption '.

2. We have reason, then, to fear, that the first vial is not yet exhausted; for it is a vial, which respects the development of a principle: the second, on the contrary, which respects a particular course of action in a single particular country, has certainly ceased to flow. Its peculiar period commenced, as we have seen, on the 2d of September in the year 1792: and it obviously terminated with the expiration of what was emphatically called the reign of terror.

3. The contents of the third vial, likewise, are now exhausted for the revolutionary war, to which it relates, was concluded in the year 1815; whence,

· Οἷον ἄρα με

Κάλλος κακῶν ὕπουλον ἐξεθρέψατε.

of course, the period of the third vial terminated at the same epoch also. Ordinary wars may, or may not, again occur, before the last predicted dreadful war of principles and opinions: but ordinary wars come not within the scope of prophecy. The special subject of the third vial is the war carried on by Revolutionary France, whether democratic or imperial, against the liberty and independence of Europe and that war, characteristically distinguished from all other common wars, was finally brought to a close in the year 1815.

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CHAPTER V.

RESPECTING THE EFFUSION OF THE FOURTH AND FIFTH VIALS.

THE three first vials, then, eminently relate to the exploits of Revolutionary France while republican, though two out of the number extend beyond the period allotted to the democracy. Hence, the fourth and fifth vials, which chronologically succeed them, must describe the leading events that come next in order to the dissolution of the republican government. Now the marked period, allotted to Revolutionary France while democratical, was followed by another equally marked period, which was allotted to Revolutionary France while imperial. The presumption, therefore, is, if I have been at all successful in the arrangement of the three first vials, that their two successors relate to this second marked period of the last woe. I apply them, accordingly, to the history of Revolutionary France while imperial; that history, however, like the history of Revolutionary France while democratic, being connected inseparably with the general history of the figurative earth or the Roman Empire. Now the history of Revolutionary France while imperial is, in fact, the history of the secular apoca

lyptic beast under his seventh short-lived and swordslain head: for, as we have already seen, the seventh distinct head of the Roman beast, which in the time of St. John was future, is the Francic Emperorship which began and ended under one extraordinary individual. Such being the case, the fourth and fifth vials give us the anticipated history of the rise and dominance and fall of that portentous meteor, the Francic Emperorship.

I. And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun and power was given unto it to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat: and they blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues; and they repented not, to give him glory'.

As all the vials are equally poured out upon the earth or the Roman platform in general, the sun, affected by the fourth vial, must of course be the allegorical sun of the Roman Empire. Now, in the abstract, the sun, when interpreted temporally, denotes the supreme governing power in any Empire or Kingdom. Hence, in the concrete, the sun, when introduced into a prophecy which professedly treats of the earth or the Roman Empire, must denote the supreme governing power of that Empire or, in other words, if the symbol be changed to that of a wild-beast as in the succeeding oracle of the fifth vial, the existing sun of the Ro

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man earth will be exactly equivalent to the existing head of the Roman beast. The hieroglyphical picture, therefore, exhibited to us on the effusion of the fourth vial, does in effect describe the then existing head of the Roman Empire, as scorching with an intolerable blaze the men who were within the sphere of its influence: while the consequence of this intense allegorical fervour is, not repentance and amendment, but a determined perseverance in blasphemy.

Nothing can be more certain, than that no such character can be ascribed to the declining and debilitated first head, or the Regal Emperorship of the Romans, at any time subsequent to the termination of the French Democracy. Hence it is clear, that the first head or the Regal Emperorship of the Romans, which fell on the 7th of August in the year 1806, cannot be meant by the scorching sun of the Roman world which makes so destructively conspicuous a figure during the effusion of the fourth vial. Neither, again, can this scorching sun be identified with some one of those five heads, which arose indeed subsequently to the Regal Emperorship of the Romans, though they severally became extinct before it because, as we are expressly assured by the interpreting angel, all those five heads had already fallen even at the time when St. John beheld the visions of the Apocalypse'. Therefore, since the scorching sun of the fourth

1 Rev. xvii. 10.

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