sources, whence the impure spirits are said to issue, it appears, that the beast and the false prophet, for a season at variance by reason of the atheistical principles adopted by the former, will then be more closely leagued together than ever; and that they will jointly meditate some grand expedition against the woman and the remnant of her seed, which however, as we shall presently see under the succeeding vial, will end only in their own confusion and utter destruction.*

SECTION III.

Concerning the vial of the vintage.

We are now arrived at the vial of consummation, which Mr. Mede very justly supposes to synchronize with the vintage. The reason is manifest: the vintage is the last event predicted in the little book, which extends, as itself repeatedly declares, through the whole 1260 years; and

plete exhaustion seemed to be at no very great distance? Is there any answer necessary to these questions? If there be, view the modern Charlemagne first leaguing himself with the Papacy, and then creating at pleasure a host of vassal kings. View him extending his dominion over the greatest part of Germany, over Holland, over Italy, over Spain. View him surrounding himself with regal slaves, who depend upon his nod, and exist only by his will. Lastly hear him, as if unconsciously impelled to bear his testimony to the truth of prophecy; hear him unreservedly avow himself to be the federal head of his creatures, hear him proclaim to all Europe that their mock sovereignties are mere federal estates of France, hear the political system of which he is the author expressly styled in his degraded senate a confederacy and a pious league. What other idea can we form of the coalition described by St. John? In every particular, local and chronological, this new coalition, unheard of, unthought of, but the other day, exactly answers to it. Even now rumours are afloat, that the seat of the false prophet is to be removed from Rome, and that the new empire is to be inaugurated by another imperial coronation in the seven-hilled city. If so, what title will be chosen but that of Emperor of the Romans? And for what purpose would that title be chosen, but as authorizing all the ancient claims of the Augustan emperors? The demands made upon Turkey by the sovereign of Venice will be as nothing, if we may judge from the inordinate ambition of the man, when compared with the demands made upon the whole world by the Emperor of the Franco-Romans. June 4, 1806,

66

Since these three unclean spirits are said to work miracles, the great boast of the apostate man of sin, it is not improbable, that the visible agents, whom they will em❤ ploy on this occasion, will be certain popish emissaries, who partly at least by false miracles will induce the infatuated adherents of the Church of Rome to embark in the expedition. Pugnare se putant pro Christi vicario, pro gloria Dei, et pro ccclesia revera autem pugnabunt cum Deo." (Pol. Synop. in loc.) Mr. Mann of the Charter House conjectured some years since, that the three unclean spirits were the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Jesuits. (See Bp. Newton's Dissert. on Rev. xvi.) I should rather have said, that these, or some other orders of monks, may hereafter be the tools of the three unclean spirits.

the last vial is poured out at the expiration of that period: consequently the last vial can only contain an enlarged account of the vintage: for, as Mr. Mede naturally observes, there cannot be two different catastrophès of the same drama.*

"And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air: and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts; and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail: for the plague thereof was exceeding great."

Bp. Newton very justly observes, that, " as the seventh seal, and the seventh trumpet, contained many more particulars, than any of the former seals and former trumpets: so the seventh vial contains more than any of the former vials." It is the vial of the vintage; the conclusion of the grand drama of 1260 years; the time of the end. When it shall be poured out, the great controversy of God with the nations will commence; his ancient people will begin to be restored; and the sentence of destruction will go forth against the beast and the false prophet, even while they are in the very midst of their temporary success, and while they are vainly flattering themselves with the hope of a complete victory over the Church of God. Such being its contents, it is said to be poured out into the air, in allusion to the dreadful storms of political thunder and lightning which it will produce.†

Three important events are comprehended under it: the earthquake, by which the great city is divided into three

* See Mede's Comment. Apoc. in Vindemiam.

+ See the preceding chapter on the symbolical language of propbees.

parts; the overthrow of Babylon; and the battle of Armugeddon, to which the kings of the earth had begun to gather themselves together under the preceding vial.

Here it may be proper to remind the reader, that the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth chapters of the Apocalypse, all belong to the last vial; and are in fact only a more enlarged account of some of the most prominent events contained by it*-The seventeenth chapter opens with a description of the great scarlet whore, who had long tyrannized over the faithful, and who was now It fully sets forth the about to be destroyed for ever. mystery of her union with her beast, of her name Babylon, of the three-fold state of her beast, of the rise of the beast's last head, and of the flourishing condition of the woman while the ten kings gave their power to the beast and made war upon the Lamb by persecuting his disciples. And it intimates that a great change should nevertheless take place in the sentiments of those kings, so that they should afterwards hate the whore, and make her This naked, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. intimation seems to be given as it were by the way, and must not therefore be confined merely to the days of the last vial. It is in fact a sort of climax, extending from the era of the Reformation down to the final destruction of the whore. She was first made naked and desolate by the alienation of the Abbey lands in protestant countries, and by the withdrawing of whole nations from her communion. Her very flesh was next eaten by the sale of the Church lands in revolutionary France, by the secularization of the German ecclesiastical electorates and monastic principalities, and by the temporary erection of an atheistical republic in her capital. But she will not be utterly burnt with fire till the time of the end, till the fatal day of Armageddon.† The ten kings however, as

* See the introductory chapter of this work.

In the same battle with the little born or the barlot the Roman beast under bis last bead will perish. "I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld, even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame," (Dan. vii. 11.) I apprehend, that the explanatory words of the angel addressed to Daniel mean precisely the same as the particular passage in They shall take away his dominion, to the Apocalypse now under consideration. consume and to destroy it unto the end." (Dan. vii. 26.) The.dominion of the barn 29

VOL. II.

Bp. Newton rightly observes, cannot literally mean all the ten kings, but only a certain part of them; for some are afterwards described as leagued with the beast, and as fighting and perishing in the cause of the false prophet:* consequently those, who are friendly to the whore, cannot be among the number of those who are instruments in the hand of God of finally burning her with fire-The eighteenth chapter contains an account of the final overthrow of Babylon-And the nineteenth chapter describes the battle of Armageddon.

1. The earthquake, by which the great city is divided into three parts, manifestly signifies, according to the usual import of prophetic language, some very great revolution, by which the Latin Empire shall either be divided into three sovereignties, or into three prefectures, like the ancient Roman empire. At the period when the French monarchy was overthrown, the city was already divided into several different parts, symbolized by the ten horns of the beast. Hence it is said, that, in that earthquake, a tenth part of the city fell. But here, by this yet future carthquake, the Latin city is to be divided only into three parts. What the precise meaning of this prediction is, and how the city will be divided into three parts, time alone can discover.

2. The fall of the spiritual Babylon, described at large in the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, relates to the same event as the destruction of the little horn of Daniel's fourth beast: they both equally predict the complete subversion of the Papacy. This is not to take place, till af

began to be taken away at the Reformation, when many of the kings withdrew their realms from the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope; but it will not be entirely consumed and destroyed till the end, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.

* Rev. xix. 19.

Mr. Kett imagines that the earthquake, by which the great city was divided into three parts, is the Reformation; and that the three parts, intended by the prophet, are the three confessions (as they are called) Popish, Lutheran, and Calvinistic. Vol. i. p. 413.) We cannot however admit this earthquake to have any connection with that important period, unless by a manifest violation of St. John's prophetic chronology. The earthquake, which divides the city into three parts, takes place under the last vial : whereas the reformation is contemporary with the war of the beast against the witnesses, and happened under the sixth trumpet, before any one of all the seven vial was poured Mr. Kett, as if conscious that this objection would be made to his scheme, endeavours to invalidate it; but, I think, quite unsuccessfully.

out.

ter the end of the 1260 years;* when the witnesses shall have ceased to prophesy in sackcloth, and when in one apocalyptic season the judgment of Babylon is come.

3. Exactly contemporary with the fall of the spiritual Babylon, or the adulterous church of Rome, will be the overthrow of its supporter the secular Babylon, or the tenhorned Roman beast. The power of both will be broken in the same battle of Armageddon. This is abundantly manifest from the concurring testimony both of DanWe learn from the former of these iel and St. John. prophets, that the last or Roman beast is to be slain, and his body destroyed and given to the burning flame because of the voice of the great words which his little horn spake; and that the reign of this little horn is exactly to continue 1260 years. We learn from the latter of them, that the same ten-horned Roman beast is to practise prosperously, in his revived or idolatrous state, the very same period of 42 months or 1260 years; and that he is to be destroyed, along with his colleague the false prophet or two-horned beast, in their last great battle against the Word of God. Now the two-horned beast or false prophet is the same ecclesiastical power as the harlot or spiritual Babylon: consequently, if the spiritual Babylon were fallen before this battle, it is evident that the false prophet could not, along with the temporal beast, have been engaged in it. Hence it appears, that the fall of the spiritual Babylon and the battle of Armageddon will be precisely contemporary, both taking place together after the termination of the 1260 years.‡

years.

Probably at the end of 30 years after that period, or at the end of Daniel's 1290

† I have already stated that Babylon means the whole Roman Empire both temporal and spiritual: the temporal Babylon being the same as the ten-borned beast; and the spiritual Babylon, as the two-borned beast.

Mr. Mede separates the fall of Babylon from the overthrow of the false prophet, and imagines that in point of time it will precede it. This opinion is built upon the idea, that Babylon is the literal city of Rome, instead of the whole papal empire. I cannot think, that it is by any means well founded, or that it at all harmonizes with the general language of the Apocalypse, in which the great city universally means, not the literal city, but the empire, of Rome. This being the case, whenever the beast and the false prophet are routed at Armageddon, the temporal and spiritual Roman empire, or the mystic Babylon, will be overthrown. Mr. Mede places the fall of Babylon under the fifth vial, and the destruction of the beast and the false prophet under the last. Comment. Apoc. in Phial. V. et VII.