though copious, was not at the height. In the spring of 1814, the allies occupied Paris: and, as the characteristic mark of the fifth vial is, that it should be poured out upon the THRONE of the wild beast; so, in exact accordance with prophecy, the sovereigns declared that they would treat neither with Buonaparte nor with any member of his family, and commanded the vanquished French senate to call another prince to the throne. Their mandate was obeyed: Buonapartè was compelled to abdicate: and the ancient dynasty was restored.

But, notwithstanding these disasters, the seventh head continued to exist: hitherto it had not been absolutely slain. Napoleon, driven as he was from France and Italy, was yet neither stripped of all his dominions, nor was he compelled to resign his imperial dignity. As the sixth head in its earlier western branch was not less the sixth head in the eye of prophecy, when confined during the short reign of Augustulus to the limits of Rome; and, as the same sixth head in its middle eastern branch was not less the sixth head in the eye of prophecy, when confined during the reign of the last Constantine to the walls of Byzantium: so neither did the seventh head cease to be the seventh head, when its actual dominions were contracted within the narrow space of a small island. The allies not only suffered the tyger to escape from the toils: but, even in the hour of adversity, they recognized his imperial title; though they confined his sovereignty to the isle of Elba. Hence Napoleon, in his insular principality, did not less

represent

represent the seventh head of the wild beast; than the same Napoleon, when seated upon the throne of France, Italy, and the western Germany. The time was not yet arrived for the slaughter of that head by the sword: the allies therefore unconsciously went on fulfilling a prophecy, when they recognized the imperial title of Napoleon, and when they permitted him to hold in full sovereignty a part of his former dominions however small. Had they not done this, the seventh head would have prematurely ceased to exist: by doing it, they preserved in it for a season the spark of political vitality.

The destined time of excision however was not far distant. Early in the year 1815, the Emperor Napoleon, with a handful of followers, landed on the southern coast of France; and, rapid as his own eagle, flew to the capital, whence he instantaneously expelled the tottering dynasty of the Bourbons. But, notwithstanding this astonishing success, the baleful contents of the fifth vial were not yet exhausted: the noxious steam still flowed upon the throne of the wild beast; and the momentary elevation of Napoleon served only to make his final overthrow the more conspicuous. Europe was forthwith in arms and the principle of her warfare ceased not to be the identical principle, which was first openly avowed by Spain in the year 1808, and which had been so graphically predelineated by the voice of inspiration. The characteristic badge of the fifth vial, from the beginning to the end of its effusion, is an attack upon the THRONE of the wild beast then under the rule of

his seventh head. Now the undisguised principle, on which the allies embarked in their final war against Napoleon, was no other than the characteristic badge of the fifth vial. They unreservedly declared, that their principle in 1815 was the very same as their principle in 1814: in other words, they unreservedly declared, that they fought exclusively against the THRONE of Napoleon. Success attended their effort; because prophecy had declared respecting the seventh form of Roman government, that, when it cometh, it must continue a SHORT space: but it was the high will of heaven, that the avenging sword of excision should be wielded by the hand of England. On the 18th of June in the year 1815, the seventh head received its predicted deadly wound by the sword. In the height of its strength it was suddenly mown down by the predetermined servant of the Almighty God: and, however high may be the rewards which an admiring prince and a grateful country have conferred upon the avenger of long outraged humanity, I cannot but deem his most elevated and most venerable title to be that of the chosen minister of Jehovah, who should perform all his pleasure, and whose right hand the Lord hath holden to subdue nations before him*. The remainder of the eventful tale is soon told. At Waterloo, the seventh head received its deadly wound by the sword and its predicted SHORT space of continuance ran out, when it immediately afterwards ex

* Isaiah xliv. 28. xlv. 1.

pired,

pired, in consequence of the formal abolition of its official title and its deprivation even of the shadow of effective sovereignty. The person, to whose single reign, its brief term of existence was limited, returned no more, decked with the trappings and adorned with the name of royalty, to his late insular dominion. Studiously degraded to the mere subject rank of a general officer, we behold him, a new Frometheus, bound by the adamantine chains of Strength-and-Violence to a tempest-beaten Antarctic

Caucasus.

ence.

But, though the seventh head of the wild beast was Topped without the pullulation of a successor, and though his body (in strict accordance with the economy of nature) sank forthwith into a state of death: yet that body no more, than the decapitated body of a literal wild beast, vanished from off the face of the earth, or ceased to maintain a bare material existStretched over many a rood, the huge carcase still lay visibly prostrate on the earth: the wild beast was dead, but he was not buried. With the picturehistory of the symbol, the verbal language of the prophecy minutely corresponds. The THRONE indeed of the wild beast was to be overturned: but his KINGDOM, though now deprived of all its seven political heads, was not to be annihilated. On the contrary, we read, that his KINGDOM, even after the fifth vial had done its work of destruction upon his THRONE, was full of DARKNESS: it continued therefore to exist, though wrapped in the profound shades of gloomy night. Such being the case, the DARK

NESS

NESS of his yet-existing KINGDOM in the verbal prophecy plainly corresponds with the DEAD STATE of his yet-existing carcase in the hieroglyphical picturehistory. I need scarcely remark, that this metaphorical phraseology is familar to perhaps every nation in the world. In the ordinary language of Scripture, and in the technical language of the old pagan Mysteries on which is industriously founded the machinery of the apocalyptic drama, DEATH is ever described as a condition of palpable DARKNEŠS Since then the effusion of the fifth vial was to produce THE DEATHLIKE DARKNESS of the still existing BESTIAL KINGDOM: we may be sure, that its contents will not be completely exhausted, until that DARKNESS OF DEATH shall have passed away, or (in other words) until the wild beast shall be retored to LIFE by the predicted rise of the eighth form of Roman government which is to be one of the preceding seven raised anew to the functions of vitality; though very probably, in accordance with the analogy of the other vials, the sixth may have begun to flow before the complete exhaustion of the fifth †. This being the case, it is manifest, that the term of the fifth vial comprehends within its limits the whole period of the wild beast's DEAD STATE or (in the language of the interpreting angel) the whole period during which the wild beast IS NOT.

Such is the political condition of the bestial kingdom throughout the appointed period of DARKNESS

*See below Dissert. vi. sect. 3.

+ Rev, xvii, 8, 11. See above Chap. xi, in init.