the consequence of which would be most violent changes, innovations of every kind, extensive and tremendous revolutions in Church and state, in the republic of letters and philosophy. This sevenfold judgment is principally intended to destroy the empire of the beast from the sea, as he has established it in the kingdoms and principalities of the world, and to retaliate on those nations who have spilled the blood of saints. The effect of the vials may therefore be known and recognized by the fall of the beast; and the commencement of the last great conflict of the Son of God against the powers of darkness, by the efficacy of the first effusion. Moreover, the noisome and grievous sores under the vials of the first and fifth angel, appear to be the same; and the vial of the seventh angel, will begin to be poured out a considerable time prior to the final doom of Babylon, which then only comes in remembrance before God. Her doom seems to be the last effect of the seventh vial.

THE FIRST VIAL

Verse 2. And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth: and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the mea which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image,

In consequence of the great voice out of the temple, which must have been the voice of the Lord, as no man could enter after it was filled with smoke, these seven angels went forth to accomplish the will of God by the effusion of their vials. The earth in the preceding verse, is the whole Roman empire : but under this vial, where the earth is put in opposition to the sea, the rivers and fountains of waters, the sun the throne of the beast, the great river

the Euphrates, and even to the circumambient air, its true signification certainly depends on a system of symbols, totally distinct from the former, and which can only be ascertained by a most careful, and minute examination and comparison of the whole. It is worthy of remark, the nearer we draw to the conclusion of this divine prophecy, the more intricate and mysterions is its language; no doubt, for the purpose of debaring vain speculation, and to shield its sanctuary from the approach of the enemies. However, the system of hieroglyphics here adopted, is neither new nor foreign to the ancient prophets, when they compare the nations of the earth, or speak of the moral relations of civil and political life. According to this system the most prominent objects in the firmament and on earth are combined, to portray the moral and political state of nations and kingdoms in one general view.

Thus the earth here signifies regularly organized and firmly established governments in the Western part of the ancient Roman empire, where all the different classes of society are kept in close compact by a code of civil laws : or in other words, the firmly established political economy in all those countries, where the inhabitants worship the beast, Isa. LXV, 17. Luke xx1, 23, 35. Isa. LXVI, 22. Haggai chap. II, 6. And thus agreeably to the same system of symbols, great earthquakes denote civil commotions and the overthrow of kingdoms and republics. Those men who bear the mark of the beast, are not only the blind and bigoted adherents of popery generally, but in particular those who hold offices in support of that hierarchy, or wear its badges of approbation. The worshippers of his image, are those who pay adoration to the images and relics of saints, canonized by the beast; which worship will now shortly rise to its highest degree of guilt, probably in coining an image for the adoration of the Papacy itself. The noisome and grievous sore, with which

they were aflicted by the effusion of this vial, is not represented in the plural number, but as one common malady in which they all participate. The original word saxos, is of the same signification with the Hebrew SCHECHIN, Exod. 1x, 9. ulcus aut inflammatio efflorescens pustulis and denotes a sore produced by a particular indisposition of body, where the humours work secretly for a considerable time, before they terminate in an eruption. This figure therefore, refers us to a disorder affecting the whole system of a body politic, in which these humours have long been concocting as so many partial maladies, until they make their appearance by bursting forth in an open rupture, discharging vitiated matter. And the words noisome and grievous, even indicate a sore that has through length of time, become carious. so as to produce notable exfoliations of the bones.

This vial in my opinion contains the spirit of revolution, that strange infatuation of French liberty and equality, of a lawless exemption from all civil and religious restraints, which bursted forth as a noisome and grievous sore in the body politic of France A. D. 1789, and actually infected all Europe by its poisonous humours. It was at first poured out upon Voltaire and his associates, and by degrees upon the illuminati, infidel demagogues, corresponding societies and atheistical clubs, who held their meetiugs under the garb of freemasonry and of other unsuspected names. These, together with the prodigality and tyranny of the courts and nobility, were the vitiated humours, which more or less, affected the popish countries, and particularly the members of the Romish Church, throughout the whole theatre of the Gregorian monarchy. This figure is very expressive, when a person thus affected is closely examined. The principal sinus or channel opening into this sore, is a blind rage of revolutionizing all the kingdoms and governments under the present order of things in the world, for the purpose

of satisfying their own ardent desire of universal dominiThis delusion predominates in their hearts, words and actions, and to the accomplishment of this wild project, they sacrifies the lives of millions, all social relations and religion without remorse of conscience.

It is even astonishing to behold the monstrous effects of this vial, which threw all Europe into convulsions, and scourged, more or less, every civilized country in the world. Where the minds of men were prepared for the reception of this imperious and disorganizing spirit, its instruments committed atrocities, which made human nature shudder. Even the females in France, turned furious demagogues, and lost the tender and soothing disposition of their sex. This vial has not produced all its effects; the Lord alone knows all the horrours, it may yet exhibit in the kingdoms and empires of Europe. This spirit has been mistaken by thousands of our American brethren, for the true spirit of liberty and republicanism which we enjoy, and thus by a strange delusion, they saluted a tyger in sheep's-clothing, and hailed the progress of God's wrath among the children of men.

THE SECOND VIAL.

Verse 3. And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea : and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.

The second vial is poured out upon the sea, immediately after the first. This also is a symbolical prophecy, and the word sea, in opposition to the symbolic earth, must

+See Dr. Helmuth's inesteemable work, on the Holy Scrptures & Baptism in the Appendix.

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signify multitudes, nations and tongues in a state of anarchy and political confusion, chap. XVII, 15; and if this should happen among maritime powers, the prediction would be verified in a double sense of the word, Daniel vII. The figure of a sea becoming as the blood of a dead man, i. e. coagulated and putrescent, is a powerful and vastly significant hieroglyphic. Because blood thrown into water becomes more fluid, until the water is thickened by great quantities of it. How much therefore, would be required to bring a sea to the consistency of coagulated blood! This terrific symbol cannot signify any thing less, than those dreadful massacres, scenes of murder, assassinations, suicides, indiscriminate butcheries, and inhuman wars of revolutionary France, which soon turned that unhappy country and a great part of Europe, into one great slaughter-house. France, in changing her kingdom into a short-lived republic, has murdered two millions of her own citizens, and the sanguinary wars, ensuing in consequence of her revolution, have swelled that number to upward of a eleven millions of persons!

I therefore date the commencement of the effusion of this vial, at the remarkable year 1792, when the king of France was taken prisoner, his monarchy overthrown, and the whole country turned into a revolutionary sea of liberty and equality. Upon this change followed those most memorable and inhuman massacres from the metropolis to every city, town, and village of the provinces, where the guillotine and every other instrument of murder, was in continual operation- Of the above two millions of persons, more than 30,000 were murdered in and about Lyons; 27,000 at Nantz; 150,000 at Paris; 300,000 in la Vendee; and among the whole number are rekoned 250'000 women, 230,000 children, and 24,000 priests. Now reader judge, whether this terrific symbol of the text has not commenced its completion in France, and what awful effusions of blood may yet ensue in other