secure and pacific government, he scorches with the intolerable blaze of a ferocious military despotism all those men who are subjected to the sphere of his influence. No signs however of repentance are observed to follow. The blasphemy, both of Popish demonolatry and of atheistic infidelity, still prevails: and the men of the Roman world either lay to their souls the flattering unction of an unscriptural superstition, or stand up in open defiance against the Lord and against his Christ.

(1.) Nothing can be at once more physically accurate and more beautifully picturesque than this part of the apocalyptic imagery.

Since the Roman World or Ecumenè is, the sub-. ject of the prophecy; the different parts of that World are shadowed out, agreeably to the well established principles of symbolical imagery, by the corresponding different parts of the natural World. Thus the earth or land of the first vial must denote the gross general territory of the Roman Empire: thus the blood-polluted stormy sea of the second vial will represent a certain large portion of that Empire; violently agitated, like the natural sea, by a revolutionary storm, which horribly transmutes its waves into the consistency of half coagulated gore: and thus the rivers and fountains of the third vial will similarly typify the various states of the Empire; which, though not internally convulsed by the fever of a revolution, are yet changed into blood by wars of a peculiarly disgusting and atrocious nature. While the allegorical World of Rome appears, depicted

E 2

depicted in this wretched condition, through the series of the three first vials; the figurative Sun of that same world is seen, in the fourth prophetic picture-history, rising portentously out of the bosom of the gory revolutionary ocean, and endowed with a terrific power of scorching and blasting its subject universe.

As such a description of a lowering morning, which proved big with the fate of Rome and of Europe, is constructed with the nicest attention to `the physical mundane economy: so does it no less accurately point out both the origin, and the political rank, and the specific character, of the sovereignty which is thus typified by the blazing lord of day.

With respect to its origin, it was to spring out of the bosom of the allegorical revolutionary ocean; as the Sun, in the natural world, appears to rise out of the bosom of the sea: with respect to its political rank, it was to bear the same relation to the Roman Ecumenè that the Sun bears to the physical universe and, with respect to its specific character, it was to scorch the Empire with the fury of an intolerable military despotism, as the literal Sun parches the arid central desert of the African continent.

Each of these particulars irresistibly directs our attention to the military Emperorship of the French, as founded by Napoleon Buonapartè: and the course of regular chronological succession, as we descend from the Saracenic and the Turcomannic woes to the third woe of atheistic Infidelity, and as

we

we pass through the harvest-horrors of revolutionary France (which were the first fruits of that last great woe) to the rising of the allegorical Sun, still leads us to behold the commencement of the Francic Emperorship in the dawning of the Sun of the fourth vial.

4

(2.) If then we admit this identification to be suf-` ficiently established both by the circumstantial and by the chronological evidence which has been adduced, we shall obviously determine from such premises, that the modern Sun of the Roman World began to rise dim and misty and obscure from the bloody bed of the revolutionary ocean on the 4th of August 1802, when the adventurer Buonapartè became the lord of the Western Empire by receiving the investiture of the First-Consulship, not as a temporary office, but during the term of his natural life.

By this political arrangement he became a sovereign prince, but a prince as yet of a dubious and equivocal description. Monarchs indeed were perplexed with fear of change: yet the newly risen Sun of the Roman World looked for a season, shorn of his beams, through the misty horizontal air.

But from this doubtful and hazy condition the young luminary, as he rapidly mounted towards the zenith, soon and completely emerged. In the May of the year 1804, the ambiguous First-Consul was proclaimed Emperor of the French: and the now fully developed Roman Sun, sprinkled with the dire contents of the fourth vial, blazed with a scorching

and

and ominous lustre upon the parched and prostrate surface of the allegorical World.

2. Thus it appears, that the fourth vial describes the rise and origin and character of the Francic Emperorship or the short-lived seventh form of Roman government: in a similar manner, the fifth vial will be found to exhibit the decline and subversion of that seventh fated form.

We may observe, that, in tracing its rise and origin and character, the prophet borrows his imagery from the grand economy of the whole natural world but, in exhibiting its decline and subversion, he returns to that former imagery, which he had already borrowed from the physical economy of a single monstrous wild beast.

This curious variation is replete with divine art and contrivance.

By reverting to his former imagery, he teaches us unequivocally, that he is now treating of the Empire symbolized by the wild beast, viewed as existing under some one of its seven heads or forms of government; and consequently that the blazing Sun of the preceding vial must be identified with the specific some one of its seven heads. For, if we inquire into the natural economy of the two successive hieroglyphics, which he has employed to picture the short reign of the Francic Emperorship, we shall find, that the Sun bears exactly the same relation to the World, which a head bears to the body of an animal. Hence the allegorical Sun, for the time being, of the Roman World, must inevitably be the very

same

same, as the allegorical head, for the time being, of the Roman wild beast. Consequently, as the fourth vial describes the allegorical Sun in the zenith of its power, and as the immediately succeeding fifth vial describes the wild beast under some one of his allegorical heads in a completely depressed condition; we may be morally certain, from the evidently connected collocation of those two vials, that the triumphant Sun of the fourth vial is the very same form of Roman government as the discomfited bestial head of the fifth vial. But the triumphant Sun of the fourth vial is the Francic Emperorship; which we have seen reason to identify with the sword lopped seventh head or with the short-lived seventh form of

Roman government. Therefore the discomfited bestial head of the fifth vial is the same sword-lopped seventh head and the same short-lived seventh form of Roman polity.

Such being the case, the prophecy of the fifth vial must clearly relate, as I have already intimated, to the decline and violent subversion of that short-lived seventh form.

The terms, in which it is couched, are the following.

The fifth angel poured out his vial on the 16 THRONE of the wild beast: and his KINGDOM was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of "heaven because of their pains and their sores, and "repented not of their deeds."

(1.) Of this predicted calamity, it is

easy enough,

even