Act III. Seventh Trumpet or Third Woe
Apoc. xi. 14; viii. 13; xvi.; xviii; xix; xx. 1, 3.
The judgments of this last woe extend to the end of the Seventh Seal, or victory of the Saints over the beast, his image, his mark, and number of his Name.a In the days of the voice of this woe when its calamities shall be complete, the Mystery of the Deity will be finished, as he hath declared the glad tidings to his servants the prophets.b The Eloah of the heavens will then have set up the kingdomc promised to them that obey him;d so that the kingdoms of this world will all have become Yahweh’s and His Anointed’s,e who reigns for the Aions of the Aions.
But before this glorious and blessed consummation, Yahweh Ail Shaddai, the Ancient of Days, comes inf upon the world as a thief in the night.g This is indispensable, because it is his personal mission to accomplish it.h At his coming the nations will be in a state of anger among themselves, with distress and perplexity; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming upon the habitable?i
In the midst of this the saints are raised from among the dead to their own judicial scrutiny; after which all of them who are approved and chosen are recognized by the Lamb as constituents of the 144,000, and follow him withersoever he goes.j Being approved, judgment is given to them for execution upon many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings;k in rendering of which there issue from them lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail, every stone being about the weight of a talent.l
Arena.—The whole habitable of Daniel’s four beasts.
p. 470Translation of Chapter XVI
1. And I heard a great voice from the Nave, saying to the Seven Angels, Go forth and pour out the vials of the wrath of the Deity into the earth.
2. And the first went forth, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there ensued a grievous and malignant ulcer upon the men who have the sign of the beast, and who do homage to his image.
3. And the second angel poured out his vial into the sea; and it became blood as of a corpse, and every living soul died in the sea.
4. And the third angel poured out his vial into the rivers, and into the fountains of the waters; and there was blood. 5. And I heard from the Angel of the waters saying, Righteous, O Lord, art thou, who art, and who wast and who art coming, because thou hast decreed these things: 6. For they have poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and to them thou hast given blood to drink; for they are worthy. 7. And I heard from another out of the Altar, saying, Yea, O Lord, the almighty Deity, true and righteous are thy judgments.
8. And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and it was given to him to scorch the men with fire. 9. And the men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the Name of the Deity who hath power over these plagues, and they repented not to give glory to him.
10. And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the throne of the beast; and it was his kingdom which had been darkened; and they did gnaw their tongues from the anguish, and blasphemed the Deity of the heaven because of their pains, and because of their ulcers; and they repented not of their works.
12. And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river the Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up that the way of the kings who are from a sun’s risings, might be prepared.
13. And I saw out of the Mouth of the Dragon, and out of the Mouth of the Beast and out of the Mouth of the False Prophet, three Unclean Spirits like to Frogs; (for they are Spirits of Dæmons working wonders) go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable, to gather them together for the war of that great day of the Deity who is almighty.
15. BEHOLD, I COME AS A THIEF. Blessed he who is watching, and keeping his garments, that he may not walk naked, and they may see his shame. 16. And he gathered them together into the place which is called Hebraistically, Armageddon.
17. And the seventh angel poured out his vial upon the Air; and there came forth a great voice from the Nave of the Heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.
p. 471 18. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, such an earthquake so great.
19. And the Great City came into three parts; and the cities of the nations fell; and Babylon the Great was called to mind before the Deity, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.
20. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21. And a great hail as of a talent’s weight descended out of the heaven upon the men; and the men blasphemed the Deity, because of the plague of the hail: for the plague therefore is exceedingly great.
Introductory Remarks
The events of this sixteenth chapter are participants with those of the thirteenth verse of chapter eleven. The woful calamity last noted there is the Reign of Terror in which “the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the Deity of the heaven.” The terror was preceded by the abolition of all titles of distinction; and by the conversion of the tenth kingdom of Babylon into the FRENCH DEMOCRATIC AND SOCIAL REPUBLIC. This was the “great earthquake,” or political revolution, which made the earth to tremble 1260 years after the giving of the Saints into the hand of the ecclesiastical element of the Little Horn—Dan. vii. 25; and the shocks and vibrations of which continued to be felt from A. D. 1790 to 1820, an “hour” of thirty years, reaching to the end of Daniel’s 1290 years; and to the beginning of the Sixth Vial, which contains “that determined” to be poured out upon the desolator of the Holy Land—Dan. ix. 27.
“The second woe hath passed away, behold the third woe comes quickly.” It is not necessary to wait for the entire exhaustion of a period, or series of events, before we may hope to find the commencement of a new period and another series. Thus, the second vial begins about the same time as the first, but in different sections of the habitable; and continues pouring out parallel or concurrently, with the third, fourth, and fifth vials. So also it may be with the termination of the second woe, and the beginning of the third, if ch. xi. 14 is to be read as the sequence of verse 13. But, I rather understand, that this thirteenth verse of the eleventh chapter is the opening of the third woe; and not the conclusion of the second. This is my most recent conviction. Hence, I should read ch. xi. 12 and 14 in succession; as, “And they ascended into the heaven in the cloud, and their enemies beheld them. The second woe hath passed. p. 472 away; behold, the third woe comes quickly. And in that hour there was a great earthquake,” and so forth. This order of exposition based upon this arrangement of verses affords space for the synchronous beginning of the third woe and first vial; and the previous development of the “Great Voice,” by which they were introduced.
The Seventh Trumpet, or Third Woe
1. The Great Voice
“And I heard a great voice from the Nave, saying to the Seven Angels, Go forth, and pour out the vials of the wrath of the Deity into the earth”—Ver. 1.
The Seven Angels previous to the appearing of the Ancient of Days, as already shown, are the Seven Spirits of the Deity operating instrumentally through “the Powers that be.” Now, what John sees and hears in vision, is a dramatic representation of what is to be transacted in the moves of the pieces upon the board by the HAND that manipulates them. The Powers are so many chessmen upon the great Babylonian chessboard, whose policy and movements do not originate from themselves, but “from the Nave;” whence issue the impulses which cause them to utter great voices, and to make moves, which are often disastrous, and even fatal to themselves; but which in no wise disturbs or impedes, but judiciously secures the final success of the incomparable Player in the Nave, who manipulates the game. Hence, when John “heard a great voice from the Nave” seventeen centuries before the beginning of the third woe, he heard an utterance symbolically prophetic of a declaration, proclamation, or manifesto, which should lead to the development of the events of the seven vials. The great voice he heard was evidently symbolical of this, because the words of the great voice were a command to the Seven Angels, and therefore to the Powers, to go forth and begin the work of pouring out the wrath of the Deity into the earth.
That which was represented to John as issuing from the Nave, the Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ caused to issue from the Powers, and therefore from himself, in that great voice they unitedly proclaimed, and sent forth from PILNITZ, July 27th, 1790. This was coeval with the earliest shocks of the “great earthquake.” The famous treaty of this date prepared for the invasion of France. The Powers regarded the cause of the French king, then threatened by the revolution, p. 473 as their own. In the declaration of Pilnitz, they required that he should be free to go wherever he pleased, that is, to join their standard; that he should be replaced on his throne, that the Assembly should be dissolved, and that the princes of the Holy Roman empire having possessions in Alsace, should be reëstablished in their feudal rights. In case of refusal they menaced France with war, in which all the Powers would concur who had guaranteed the French monarchy.
This great voice only irritated the Assembly and people of France. They demanded by what right the princes of Europe combined to interfere in their government; by what right they gave orders to a great people, and imposed conditions upon it; and since the sovereigns appealed from them to force, they prepared themselves for resistance. The frontiers were put in a state of defence, 100,000 of the national guards were levied, and they waited with assurance the attacks of the kings, well convinced that the French people, animated by the Spirit of the Revolution, “the Spirit of life from the Deity,” and within their own frontiers, would be invincible.
Under the patronage of the Pilnitz Coalition, “the Emigration” was making alarming progress. The two brothers of Louis XVI, the prince of Condè and the Duke of Bourbon, had protested against the king’s acceptance of the Constitution, as he had no power to alienate the rights of the ancient monarchy. This protest soon circulated through France, and produced a great effect upon their partisans. The officers left the army, the nobles abandoned their châteaux, and whole companies deserted, to enroll themselves in the anti-revolutionary regiments on the frontiers. Those who refused to emigrate were threatened with being degraded to the class of the people, when the nobility should return victorious. The Emigration was styled “External France,” and was formed in the Austrian Low Countries, and in the neighboring electorates. The Counter-Revolution was openly prepared at Brussels, at Worms, and at Coblentz, not only under the protection of Foreign Courts, but even with their assistance. This fact identifies “the emigration” with the operation of the “Great Voice;” through the emissaries of which in the interior of France, it was enabled to combat the Revolution in its camp, and to foment civil war.
In preparing the situation for the outpouring of the First Vial, there were the European Coalition of the diademed horns, the kings of the earth, and the image of the beast; together with the Emigrant Nobility and non-juring Priests beyond the frontiers: also the Revolution, with its priestly and royalist enemies within the country. The refractory ecclesiastics lost no opportunity of exciting a p. 474 diversion which might prove useful to the emigrants. “The priests, and more especially the bishops,” says the Marquis de Ferrières, “employed all the resources of fanaticism, to rouse the lower classes, both in town and country, against the civil constitution of the clergy,” which was fatal to the dominion of the Pope in France. The bishops commanded the priests no longer to celebrate what they call “divine service” in the same churches with the constitutional clergy, lest the people should confound the two modes of worship, and the two orders of priesthood. “Independently,” he adds, “of the circular letters addressed to the curates, instructions designed for the people were distributed through the country. In these it was stated, that it was not allowable for any one to receive the sacraments from the hands of the constitutional priests, who were designated as intruders; that all who participated in them became guilty, by their mere presence, of mortal sin; that those who were married by the intruder should not be regarded as married; that they would draw down a curse upon themselves and their children; that no one was to hold communication with them, nor with those who had separated themselves from the church; that the municipal officers who installed them became apostates like themselves; that even at the moment of installation, the ringers of the bells and the sacristans were to abandon their duty. These fanatical addresses produced the effect expected by the bishops, and religious dissensions broke out in all quarters.”
The revolt of the disaffected popish faction occurred chiefly in the departments of Calvados, or Gévaudan, and of La Vendée. These provinces were not much disposed to welcome the Revolution, because the middle and more intelligent class was far from numerous there; and the populace, or ignorant multitude, were blindly devoted to the clergy and nobility, upon whom they depended. Such a population as this had to be prepared, therefore, for a severe visitation of the wrath of the first vial. This preparation was effected by the opposing forces brought to bear upon them. The Emigration without, and the refractory ecclesiastics within, operating upon a brutal and superstitious multitude, was perceived by the Legislative Assembly to be a danger for the Revolution, which required to be crushed out by the most vigorous appliances. It decreed, that all Frenchmen assembled beyond the frontiers found to be embodied on Jan. 1, 1792, should be treated as conspirators, and become liable to the punishment of death, and confiscation of property for the benefit of the nation: while the refractory priests were commanded to take the oath of citizenship, under pain of being deprived of their pensions, and of being declared suspected of revolt against the law.
p. 475 But Louis XVI was unwilling to sanction any measures taken against the Emigrant Noblesse, protected by the Powers; and the seditious priests, their allies, throughout the land. He therefore, vetoed the decrees against them. By this use of his prerogative in their favor, he came to be regarded by the people as the accomplice of the enemies of the Revolution. The rejected decrees were not replaced by others. The Assembly, however, despatched a message to the king by Vaublanc, saying, “Sire, scarcely had the Assembly cast its eyes on the situation of the realm, when it perceived that the troubles which still agitate it have their source in the criminal attempts of the French Emigrants. Their audacity is supported by the German Princes. These hostile preparations, these threats of invasion, require armaments which absorb immense sums, which the nation would have poured with joy into the hands of its creditors.
“It is for you, Sire, to put an end to them, it is for you to hold, in addressing foreign powers, the language which becomes the sovereign of the French people! Tell them, that every country that continues preparations against France, must be numbered among her enemies; that we will religiously regard our oath of attempting no conquests; that we offer to live with them in brotherly neighborhood, and to grant them the inviolable friendship of a free and powerful people; that we will respect their laws, their customs, and their constitutions; but that we require in return that ours should be respected! Tell them, lastly, that if the princes of Germany continue to countenance preparations directed against the French, the French will carry into their country, not fire and sword, but liberty! It is for them to calculate what may be the consequence of this awakening of the nations!”
In consequence of this message, the king yielded to the general wish. He notified the German princes to cause all hostile meetings and dispositions of the French emigrants to cease in their States, or he would regard them as enemies; and wrote to the emperor of Germany to interpose his authority, as head of the empire, to avert the evils which any longer obstinacy on the part of some of the Germanic Body might occasion.
The steps taken by Louis XVI. relative to the princes of the empire, were supported by military preparations. Three armies were formed under the command of Rochambeau, of Luckner, and of La Fayette. On the other hand, Austria gave orders to marshal Bender to defend the Elector of Trèves if he were attacked, and ratified the conclusions of the Diet of Ratisbon. These demanded the restoration of the possessionary princes; the Diet refused to allow that they p. 476 should be indemnified in money for the loss of their rights; and left to France the choice only of the reëstablishment of feudality in Alsace, or war. These two resolutions of the cabinet of Vienna were of a very hostile nature. Her troops marched upon the French frontiers, and proved clearly that France was not to trust to her inaction. Fifty thousand men were stationed in the Low Countries; six thousand were posted in the Brisgaw, and thirty thousand were despatched from Bohemia. This formidable army of observation could at a moment’s notice, be rendered an army of attack.
The Assembly felt that there was an urgent necessity of compelling the Emperor to decide. They regarded the emigrants as his instruments. They were desirous of anticipating this dangerous league of sovereigns, and of preventing it from having time to prepare it self. They therefore required the emperor to explain before Feb. 10, 1792, in a clear and precise manner, his real intentions with regard to France, whose situation was daily becoming more and more dangerous. The answers of prince Kaunitz to the explanations demanded were by no means satisfactory. He even refused to treat directly, and the baron of Cobentzel was charged with replying that Austria refused to depart from the conditions she had imposed. The reëstablishment of the monarchy on the basis of the royal sitting of June 23, the restoration of the property of the clergy, of the lands of Alsace with all their rights to the German princes, and of Avignon and the Venaissin territory to the Pope, such was the ultimatum, or among the last echoes of the “Great Voice,” which brought about the outpouring of the first of the Seven Vials. All possibility of agreement was at an end, and the maintenance of peace was no longer to be expected. All that now remained to be decided on was whether to wait for or commence the war.
This question was determined April 20, 1792. Louis XVI., attended by all his ministers, presented himself before the Assembly on that day, and caused General Dumourier, then minister of war, to make report on the political situation of France. He concluded his recital of grievances by advising war against Austria. The king then proposed a declaration of war, which was received by the National Assembly with a deep and silent emotion. After the king had retired, they determined to meet in the evening, when the war was resolved on almost unanimously. Thus was begun with the chief of the confederate powers, that war which lasted a quarter of a century, which confirmed the Revolution triumphantly, and which changed the whole face of Europe.
By this historical sketch, the reader enlightened in the knowledge of the Deity with spiritual understanding, will be enabled to perceive p. 477 the working of the Seven Spirits on all the agents of the situation, on the Powers, the emigrants, the refractory priests, the French king, political parties in the Assembly, the clubs, and the populace, to bring on a crisis in which there would be found scope for the outpouring of wrath upon the worshipers of the beast’s image, and upon the men who had the beast’s sign. The sketch illustrates, not only the “great voice,” or note of preparation for war, but what the Seven Angel-Spirits did in obedience to the command, “Go forth!” They issued “from the Nave,” July 27, 1790; and reached the crisis predetermined, April 20, 1792, a period of twenty-one months. This was a short period, but pregnant with events, which after seventy-five years, are still in process of development.
2. Act I.—The First Vial
“And the first angel went forth, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there ensued a grievous and malignant ulcer upon the men who have the sign of the beast, and who do homage to his image.”—Ver. 2.
This first angel is the only one of the seven of whom it is individually testified that “he went forth.” They all went forth together, and formed the situation. They did not successively go forth from the Nave, when the time came for each to pour out. If they had, a distinct situation would have required to be created for each; whereas all seven being represented as going forth together, it was only necessary to say of the first “he went forth,” as the coöperative work of the twenty-one months laid a foundation, broad and deep; for the combined operation of the first five; and the successive outpouring of the sixth and seventh.
The first angel poured out the wrath committed to him “upon the earth.” This arena of divine indignation is expounded in the text by the words, “upon the men who have the sign of the beast, and who do homage to his image ;” that is, upon the papal populations of Europe; and upon those of the same section of the Continent, who, although not constitutionally papal, are signed with the papal institution of infant rhantism, which in violation of scripture, reason, and philology, they blasphemously style, “christian baptism!” As the first angel sounded his trumpet against the earth before it was planted with the modern kingdoms of Europe, or Ten Horns, to bring them into position as elements of the new papal constitution of the West (ch. viii. 7); so the angel of the first vial pours out his portion of wrath upon the same arena considerably extended. He begins with France, the Tenth of the Great City, as the most murderous of the horns in their co-operation with the Papacy in its p. 478 wars against the witnesses and saints of Jesus. His visitations descended grievously upon all the departments of that country; but with the greatest intensity upon those sections of it, where their blood had been most abundantly shed. France became an altar of sacrifice to which beasts were brought for slaughter that had devoured and oppressed the saints. The “great voice” brought them thither from all parts of “the Holy Roman Empire,” and from Naples, Piedmont, Spain, Russia, and Prussia; in short, there remained no other states neutral than Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Turkey. All these peoples, on hearing of the ignominious decapitation of Louis XVI, by the republicans, proceeded to the invasion of France with forces amounting to 355,000 horse and foot; by which they flattered themselves they would sweep the Revolution from “the earth ;” and reëstablish the old regime.
In the words of an orator of the Convention, “the Republic was nothing more than a great city besieged; France was nothing more than one vast camp.” It soon had forty armies, and twelve hundred thousand soldiers; with which to combat the invading hosts, and to suppress the almost general rising of the departments, sixty of which were in open insurrection. But, having completely organized their immense armies, and planned their new system of tactics, their forces were rendered tremendously formidable. They subdued the insurrection, and in the memorable campaign of 1793—4, carried the war into the territories of their invaders. At the end of this, they had been victorious in twenty-nine battles, and in more than one hundred less decisive engagements. They had taken a hundred and fifty-two cities and towns, and 3,800 pieces of cannon; ninety standards, and 70,000 muskets; they had killed 80,000 of their enemies, and taken 90,000 prisoners: and at length annexed Belgium and Holland to France.
“And there ensued a grievous and malignant ulcer upon the men who have the sign of the beast, and who do homage to his image.” In the natural body, an ulcer is an open, running sore, resulting from local inflammation, or constitutional irritation, more or less intense. In its formation, it is attended with heat, redness, pain, and swelling, which result in a solution of the continuity of the part, or an open sore; which often, if malignant, eats away the flesh, and lays bare the bones.
Such is the figure used in the text illustrative of the effect of the hot, fiery, painful, and swelling indignation of the Deity poured out from the vial of the first angel upon the men of the Body Politic, to which the sign and image of the beast belong. In the first epoch of the French Revolution, it became the subject of a high degree of irritation, p. 479 which progressed rapidly into an intense and burning inflammation, which ulcerously destroyed the organic constitution of the State. No great popular revolution has ever been accomplished, nor ever will be, without the infliction of misery, and the commission of excess which makes humanity shudder. This misery and excess in all their ramifications and operations in relation primarily to tho French people, and secondarily, to those other people whom they invaded, and among whom they introduced their disorganizing, and sanguinary revolutionary policy, is represented by the “grievous and malignant ulcer” of our text. The history of the period from May 5, 1789, to the August 4, of the same year, a short period of three months, is full of the most important transactions; and showing that had the Revolution not been opposed by the French Court, nobility, and clergy, all interested in maintaining abuses in church and state, it would have been less prompt and less complete. Each refusal by these to yield to the demands of the Revolution, became for it the occasion of new successes, it overthrew intrigue, resisted authority, triumphed over force, and by August 4, the whole edifice of absolute monarchy in “the Tenth of the Great City” had been shaken by the mismanagement of its supporters. The 17th of June, by a memorable decree of the Commons, annihilated the three orders, and changed the States General into the National Assembly. The royal sitting of the 23d of June, at which Louis XVI. quashed all its resolutions, and imperiously, but ineffectually, commanded the Orders to resume their original position, the moral influence of the crown was lost. The 14th of July, the date of the destruction of the Bastile, terminated, its material power; the Assembly inherited the one, and the people the other; finally, the 4th of August, when all privileges were abolished by “a Saint Bartholomew of abuses,” the first epoch of the Revolution was completed; an epoch conspicuously detached from the others, in which the seat of power was displaced, and all the preliminary changes were effected.
The epoch which followed is that in which the new order of things is discussed and established, and in which the Assembly, after having been destructive, became constituent. This assembly terminated its own existence, September 29, 1791. It accomplished in two years “the greatest revolution which a single generation of mankind ever witnessed.” In the midst of its labors it put down despotism and anarchy, by defeating the intrigues of the court, the high clergy, and nobility, and maintaining the subordination of the people. But its successors, the National Legislative Assembly, did not apply itself to the consolidation of the work already done; and the Revolution, which was divinely commissioned to subvert the monarchy, under its p. 480 auspices entered upon its republican phase, in which the “grievous and malignant ulcer” broke forth in all the hideousness of carnage and corruption.
Under the National Constituent Assembly, the shocks of the “great earthquake” had abolished all privileged orders; declared the possessions of the catholic church national property, and sold it for the use of the state; abolished tithes; ordained the civil constitution of the clergy, by which they were made independent of the Pope, and dependent upon the state; and abolished all titles, armorial bearings, liveries, and orders of chivalry; so that vanity lost its privileges, as power had already done. These radical organic changes caused the high clergy to declare war against the Revolution; the nobility to emigrate; and foreign powers to abandon the struggle of kings against each other, and to begin, in alliance with the emigrant priests and nobility without, and the refractory ecclesiastics within, the struggle of kings with the awakening peoples of the world. Thus it was, that during this epoch, the parties separated more and more, and that the two classes, the noblesse and clergy, the enemies of the Revolution, prepared the elements of civil and foreign war, which when in operation were “a grievous and malignant ulcer” upon all who suffered from them.
Louis XVI. had attempted to escape to the frontiers, but was recaptured and brought back to Paris; and provisionally suspended by the Assembly. The terrible republican party now began to appear upon the stage. Their agency was necessary to the fall of “the Tenth of the City,” Babylon the Great. The Court, the aristocrats, and the constitutionalists, were all in favor of monarchy, absolute or limited; therefore, to effect the fall decreed, it was necessary that a party should be developed, whose irrepressible passion should be a leveling hatred to everything savoring of the craft of kings. This party was the republican, which until the flight of the king, had no substantive existence, or no pretext for manifesting itself. It now began to struggle for itself under its own banner. Its strength was in the clubs of the Jacobins and Cordeliers, and in the mob. The republicans considered Louis XVI. as a private citizen, since he fled, and demanded a substitute for him. They were, however, the minority in the Constituent Assembly, and therefore failed; but when this was superseded by the Legislative Assembly, they found themselves in the majority. Among them were Danton, Marat, Camille Desmoulins, Favre d’Eglantine, St. Just, and the Robespierres, names suggestive of the malignancy of the ulcer about through them to break out upon the men who worship the image of the beast and have his sign.
p. 481 As previously stated, France declared war against Austria, April 20, 1792. It was determined to invade Belgium. Scarcely had the French met the enemy than a panic terror seized the troops. The cry through all the ranks was, Sauve qui peut! The Jacobins accused the counter-revolutionists, who did not attempt to conceal their joy, of having occasioned the rout by raising the cry. It was thought that the Court was acting in concert with the Austrians and their emigrant allies; and that there was a secret committee which maintained a treasonable correspondence with the enemy. Public distrust was therefore now at its height. The state of the constitution was acquiring daily more and more a revolutionary aspect. The king counted no longer upon anything but on the state of Europe, he therefore dispatched an emissary on a secret mission to the Coalition.
The influence of the Jacobins now became enormous. The populace was in the greatest agitation. Eight thousand armed petitioners waited upon the Assembly. They complained of the inactivity of their armies, and insisted upon the cause being discovered; and that if it proceeded from the executive power, they required that it should be annihilated.
From the Assembly, their numbers having increased to thirty thousand, they marched to the king’s palace. As they were demolishing the doors with axes, Louis XVI. ordered them to be opened. The stormy wave rushed in, and demanded his sanction to certain decrees he had vetoed, and the appointment of new ministers. But he refused their petition; and for this time, they were persuaded to retire. Soon after this, the Assembly proclaimed that the country was in danger. The indispensable measures of defence it decreed carried to its height the excitation of the revolutionary phrenzy. On July 25, 1792, the Duke of Brunswick put the army of Europe in motion for the invasion of France, the suppression of the Revolution, and the punishment of the republicans. He published “a great voice,” or manifesto in the name of the emperor of Germany and king of Prussia. Russia and England, though they secretly approved the attacks of the European Coalition, had not yet coöperated in them. The duke reproached those who had usurped the reins of administration in France with having troubled its good order, and overthrown its legitimate government. He declared that the Allied Sovereigns had taken up arms in order to put an end to anarchy in France, to arrest the attacks upon the altar and the throne, to render to the king the security and the liberty of which he had been deprived, and to put him in a situation for exercising his legitimate authority. In consequence, p. 482 he declared the national guards and the authorities responsible for all these disorders, until the arrival of the troops of the coalition. He summoned them to return to their ancient fidelity. He said that the inhabitants of the towns which ventured to defend themselves should be punished immediately as rebels, according to the rigor of war, and their houses demolished or burnt: that if the city of Paris did not restore the king to his full liberty, or refused to render him the respect due to him, the Allied Princes rendered personally responsible for such failure on their heads, to be judged by military law, without hope of pardon, all the members of the National Legislative Assembly, of the department, of the district, of the municipality, and of the national guard; that if the palace were forced, or insulted, the Allied Potentates would take an exemplary and memorable vengeance, by giving up Paris to plunder, and to total destruction. He promised, on the contrary, that he would engage to employ the good offices of the confederate princes with Louis XVI., in favor of the inhabitants of Paris, and obtain for them the pardon of their errors and offences, if they promptly obeyed the orders of the coalition.
This “great voice” roused the spirit of the whole nation; and more than anything else hastened the fall of the throne, and opposed the success of the coalition. There was but one wish, one cry of resistance from one end of France to the other. The popular party, which was thus forced, as it were, to triumph, saw no other means than that of annulling the monarchy, and in order to annul it, to depose the king. His dethronement was discussed in the clubs. Forty-seven sections of Paris declared that if the resolution of dethronement were not pronounced by the Assembly that very day, the tocsin should be sounded at midnight, the drums should beat the générale, and the palace should be attacked on the 10th of August.
The Court had put itself into a state of defence, and the king hoped to reëstablish himself entirely. The palace was defended in the best manner. But the king was very melancholy; and upon a review of the troops, found by the cries, Vive la nation! Down with the Veto! Down with the Traitor! that disaffection was widely diffused among them. While the review was in progress, the insurgents were advancing in several columns upon the Tuileries. They demanded the dethronement of the king. He was informed that they were everywhere successful; that the national guards were not to be trusted, and that the royal family would expose itself to infallible ruin, if its members did not place themselves in the midst of the Legislative Assembly. This they reluctantly consented to do; and after much p. 483 difficulty arrived there unharmed amid the abuse, threats, and vociferations of the multitude.
After the king’s departure the palace was forced, and the Swiss guards massacred. Shouts of victory reached the Assembly; and the fate of the monarchy was decided. The multitude and its chiefs had the entire power, and were determined to exert it. The Assembly found itself constrained to yield. It was ordered to convoke a National Convention, to dismiss the ministers, and to suspend the authority of the king, who was transferred to the Temple as a prisoner, by the all-powerful commune, under the pretext that it was impossible otherwise to be sure of his person. The party now ordered the demolition of all the statues of its kings, and of all the emblems of royalty. The 10th of August divided France into two parties, of which the one was attached to monarchy, while the other desired a republic. Danton was at the head of the republicans; and his advice in the present danger of the country, was to “frighten the royalists.” He wished to repress his enemies by means of terror. A great number of persons were imprisoned on the ground of their rank, their opinions, or their conduct. These were mainly selected from the clergy and the nobility. The capture of Verdun by the enemy caused Paris to fancy him at its gates. The Commune seized this moment of alarm to execute its terrible design. The cannon was fired, the tocsin sounded, the barriers were closed, and the massacres of the 2d of September began.
The prisoners shut up at the Carmelites, at the Abbey, at La Force, the Conciergerie, etc., were butchered during three days, by a band of about three hundred murderers, under the orders and in the pay of the Commune. These men, inspired by a silent fanaticism, seemed less the ministers of vengeance, than the performers of a labor to be done; they massacred without fury, but without remorse—with all the confidence of fanatics, and the obedience of hangmen. The Assembly wished to put a stop to this operation of the “grievous and malignant ulcer” upon the worshipers of the beast’s image, but could not. The ministry was as impotent as the Assembly. The terrible Commune alone was all-powerful, and directed everything. The soldiers who guarded the prisoners durst not resist the Avengers, and suffered them to do their work of death; the populace looked on as indifferent spectators or accomplices; and the rest of the citizens dared not even venture to discover their horror.
The National Convention met Sept. 24, 1792. In its first sitting it abolished royalty, and proclaimed the Republic, by acclamation; and on the following day it was ordered that all public acts should be dated from “the first year of the French Republic.” Such were p. 484 the salutary effects of the transient successes of the Austrian and Prussian armies, and of the ill-judged manifestoes, or “Great Voice,” by which they were preceded. They only exasperated a people they were intended to intimidate. They hastened the fall of that throne which they came to support, and consolidated that power which they intended to crush. Their object was to reëstablish a monarchy— their efforts gave birth to a republic.
From the moment of the fall of this Tenth Monarchy of the Great City, two powerful parties entered the arena, namely, the Girondists and the Mountainists; and these parties divided the Convention, and by their violent and sanguinary struggles for the ascendancy, aggravated the “grievous and malignant ulcer” which was consuming the quivering flesh of the Image-Body in France. They attacked each other with the utmost inveteracy. None, however, of the measures of the Girondists succeeded. The Mountainists profited ably by their want of the most ordinary prudence; and extended their views to the destruction of the Gironde, as well as to that of Louis XVI., whose condemnation to the guillotine was demanded as a security for liberty. The latter was decreed by the Convention, and executed January 21, 1793; two months nearly before the termination of the 1260 years, from Justinian’s institution of the Bishop of Rome, ecclesiastical lord paramount of the Great City. The consequences of this tragical event intensified the malignancy of the ulcer in regard to France, and scarcely less so to all Europe, being manifested in a fierce and devouring tyranny, and an almost universal war.
The despotism of the multitude under Danton, Robespierre, and Marat, under the name of the Republic of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity”—was now the sovereign authority. An inevitable result of their access to power was the civil war in La Vendée. This country, backed by the sea and the Loire, traversed by few roads, and covered with villages, hamlets, and castlewards, had maintained its ancient state of feudal existence. In La Vendée there was neither education nor civilization. The peasantry had acquired no other ideas than those communicated to it by the priests, or “men having the sign of the beast,” and understood nothing of a revolution which was the result of opinions and wants altogether unknown to their situation. The nobles and priests, finding themselves a strong party in La Vendée, did not emigrate. This region and the new France that had arisen, had nothing in common but their language. It was certain, therefore, that the “grievous and malignant ulcer” would break out with terrible effect upon its priest-ridden population; which revolted, and brought upon their country the terrible visitation of the merciless revolutionary tribunal.
p. 485 After the 2nd of June, the Girondists, who had not yet been guillotined, extended the flame of civil war; so that sixty out of the eighty-three departments of France, were in insurrection against the Convention. The situation of the Republic could not now be worse. It had to put an end to civil wars, to repair the disasters of the army, and to repel the whole of Europe; yet the bold men at the head of it were not intimidated at their situation. At the suggestion of Danton, they took their great and last oath, that they would die or annihilate the tyrants. After this the tide of events began to turn in favor of the Convention, which soon became everywhere victorious. The Committee of Public Safety, thinking, not without cause, that its enemies, although subdued, were not disposed to submission, adopted a terrible system of extermination, to prevent their recovering themselves. They sent twelve columns, known by the name of the Infernal Columns, to scour the country with fire and sword, to explore the woods, to carry off those who were collected together, and to spread terror throughout the Vendéan country of the Image-worshipers of the Beast. The Committee, now the great power in the republic, abandoned itself to the most terrible executions. Armies destroy only on the field of battle: it is a different thing with parties who, in violent situations, fearing that the struggle may be renewed even after victory, fortify themselves against new attempts by the most inexorable rigor. By this they increased the grievousness and malignancy of the ulcer, from which the hemorrhage was copious and incessant. They established an entirely NEW ERA as compared with that founded on the legislation of Justinian. In place of the Catholic calendar they substituted that of the republican, for the week of seven days, the decade of ten, making every tenth day the day of rest, instead of Sunday. The New Era was dated from Sept. 22, 1792, the epoch of the foundation of the Republic. The Catholic worship of the beast’s image was abolished in 1793. Gobet, constitutional bishop of Paris, proceeded in full procession to the Convention, and declared that the religion he had taught so long was, in every respect, a piece of priest-craft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred truth. The gold and silver plate of the Romish bazaars was seized; and the bazaars themselves, in most districts of France, were closed against priests and worshipers; the bells were broken and cast into cannon, and the whole ecclesiastical establishment worthily destroyed. Thus, was righteously avenged upon “the men who, had the sign of the beast, and the worshipers of his image,” the terrible cruelties and massacres of St. Bartholomew’s, and of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, inflicted by the kings of the House of Bourbon, and the priests of Rome. The “grievous and malignant ulcer” was the Deity’s p. 486 way of doing justice to the slain. It was the first instalment of wrath to be poured out upon the blasphemers of “his name, and tabernacle,—them who dwell in the heaven.” It was a signal inception of the Third Woe, which awaits its consummation, when the Seventh Angel shall have ceased to sound.
3. Act II.—The Second Vial
“And the Second Angel poured out his vial into the sea; and it became blood as it were of a corpse; and every living soul died in the sea”—Ver. 8.
The Seven Spirits of the Deity had all gone forth from the Nave on a mission of divine wrath upon the inhabitants of the apocalyptic earth—ch. viii. 13. While the first angel was operating in France, the other six were not idle spectators of the flesh-devouring phenomena of the “grievous and malignant ulcer.” Had the six been inoperative elsewhere, the other powers of the Great City would have left France to perish of the ulcer, while they maintained a strict neutrality, and confined themselves exclusively to their own internal affairs. But this, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, in harmony with the apocalyptic programme, is preparing things for their appointed and predetermined end, would not allow. They had to adopt a policy that would implicate them in the dire and woeful calamities of the time. All the powers of antichristendom were guilty before Heaven—they had all, in the 1260 years of the Papacy that had passed since its institution by Justinian, “committed fornication with her;” and their populations had all “been made drunk with the wine of her fornication” (ch. xvii. 2; xviii. 3): why, then, should they not be made to “drink the wine of the wrath of the Deity poured unmixed in the cup of his indignation,” as well as the same class of worshipers of the beast’s image in the Gallic Tenth of the Great City? No reason to the contrary can be adduced: and therefore, the Seven Spirits of the Deity were all engaged with the several powers of the earth and habitable in preparing a situation, which in due time and order, would bring them all under the operation of the wrath decreed against them.
While the wrath of the first angel-period of the third woe, or seventh trumpet, was generating and developing the grievous and malignant ulcer in the body politic of the Great City, the Seven Spirits were operating upon the British Power, and preparing it for the work of wrath upon the apocalyptic sea; which, in this place, is representative of all the countries of “Babylon the Great” accessible to ships of war.
The pouring out of the vial into the sea, indicates that a maritime war would commence with the outpouring; and that, as the sea was p. 487 to “become blood as it were of a corpse,” the war would be of unparalleled severity. To become blood as it were of a corpse, was also indicative that no hostile navies could ride the waves, except the ships of the power used as the agent of the Seven Spirits: That all naval life and activity would become stagnant, as the blood of a corpse, which is incapable of circulating, as during life, through the arterial and venous channels of the body. All the war ships of the Great City found at sea would be destroyed by the potential minister of wrath; or compelled to take refuge beyond his reach, or to shut themselves up and not to venture out to sea. The ocean being thus cleared of the war ships belonging to the Powers of Babylon the Great, every seafaring living soul was, to all intents and purposes of war, dead. When “Britannia ruled the waves” there was no living soul afloat to fire a gun to her dismay. The French upon the land, and the British upon the sea, were the contemporary agents of the Seven Spirits for the tormentation of the worshipers of the beast’s image in the second, third, fourth, and fifth vials of the sanguinary and scorching wrath of the avenger.
The portion of wrath committed to the Angel of the Sea began to be poured out in Holland on the landing of the British there, Feb. 26, 1793. It continued to pour concurrently with the third, fourth, and fifth vials, for twenty years, with no intermission save the brief and deceptive peace of Amiens in 1802.
The author of Modern Europe in writing of this period says, “In the grand drama that was at this time acting on the theatre of the world, all the powers of Europe were unhappily called to sustain a part: but France was unquestionably the prime actor, and her history must therefore be allowed to take the precedence of that of every other country. We may now be allowed to say, that it had been happy for England, and for the Continental States also, had she stood aloof at this awful crisis, as a mere spectator of the horrid tragedy, occupying an attitude of self-defence. Secure in her insulated situation, and garrisoned by her wooden walls, she might have bid defiance to the volcano, and remained secure amid the tempest. It was her policy also to remain at peace; but unhappily at this time, the sympathies of the different parties in England were so powerfully excited by the state of things upon the Continent, that the dictates of sound reason could no longer be heard; and the wickedness of the ruling party in France was certainly calculated to awaken the horror of men in an extraordinary degree: the consequence was that the original friends of the Revolution became mute; the once sacred name of liberty itself became offensive; the alarmists rose suddenly in number and force; clamors and indignation sprang up in every quarter; p. 488 and amid the wild uproar of false terrors and of virtuous sympathy, the nation was plunged headlong into a state of war.”
Thus the Seven Spirits of the Deity, ordinarily styled “Providence,” operated upon parties in France and England for the development of the predetermined wrath of the Second Vial. No doubt England and the Continental States would have escaped the awful castigation of the vials, if she had stood aloof; for without her subsidies of many millions sterling, they could not have equipped and brought their armies into the field, to have fought the battles of the third, fourth, and fifth vials, through which they were to drink blood, be terribly scorched with fire, and to gnaw their tongues for pain. If she had stood aloof, the war and mercantile navies of Denmark, Holland, France, and Spain would not have been annihilated; she would not have lost her hundreds of thousands in the continental wars against the French and their allies; and she would not now be groaning under taxation, and a national debt that will never be paid. But she could not stand aloof. Her inevitable destiny was to play the part in the terrible tragedy of the vials which the wisdom of Deity had assigned her, and for which she had been prepared. Nations cannot do what they please, any more than individuals. The great manager of the world’s theatre is the Lord Jesus Christ, whose dramatic programme is the Apocalypse or Revelation given to him by the Father; the nations and powers are mere performers played off by him against one another for the denouement of the plot divinely conceived. He creates war and makes peace; and without his permission “the powers that be” can do neither. He would not allow his judgments upon the men of the beast’s sign, and the worshipers of his image to be stopped, or interrupted even, for the comfort and commercial prosperity of England, and her Harlot Church, and nation of sectarian abominations. He paid no regard to their stereotyped petition of “Give peace in our time, O Lord!” He paid no respect to the twenty-six episcopal hypocrites in the upper house of Parliament, who prayed for peace, and voted for war. Such a nation had to be punished, as well as their brother-hypocrites and blasphemers upon the Continent. England, therefore, could not stand aloof; but was compelled by inexorable necessity to send her children to the shambles, and to share in the miseries she was instrumental in inflicting upon the world.
The words, “the sea became blood as it were of a corpse; and every living soul in the sea died,” are amplified and somewhat expounded in the language of the Second Trumpet prophecy. In this, the sea became blood; the creatures that were in the sea, and had life, died; and the ships were destroyed. All this resulted from the great Genseric Mountain burning with fire, being cast into the same p. 489 sea as the contents of the Second Vial. The consequences were similar, but upon a grander scale. The Vandal power destroyed the power and commerce of Rome from the sea; and afflicted its maritime provinces with sanguinary incursions. A like result ensued through the agency of Britain, which annihilated the maritime power, commerce, and colonies of the countries of “Babylon the Great.” The following summary will be suggestive to the reader of the extent and severity of the wrath of this vial. In 1793, the greater part of the French fleet at Toulon was destroyed by Lord Hood; in June, 1794, followed Lord Howe’s great victory over the French off Ushant; then the taking of Corsica, and nearly all the smaller Spanish and French West India Islands; after this, in 1795, Lord Bridport’s naval victory, and the capture of the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch; likewise, soon after, the capture of a French and Dutch fleet sent to retake it; then, in 1797, the victory over the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent, and that off Camperdown over the Dutch; then, in succession, Lord Nelson’s three great victories of the Nile in 1798, of Copenhagen in 1801, and of Trafalgar in 1805. In this long naval war, extending from 1793 to 1815, it appears from James’ Naval History that there were destroyed altogether near 200 ships of the line, between 300 and 400 frigates, and an almost incalculable number of smaller vessels of war and ships of commerce. As Dr. Keith remarks, the whole history of the world does not present such a period of naval war, destruction, and bloodshed. In the figurative language of the prophecy “the sea became blood as it were of a corpse.”
It will be unnecessary for me to follow the British in their descents upon Holland, the maritime provinces of France and Italy; and their campaigns in Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and so forth. These all belong to the wrath of the second vial, consummated by the famous battle of Waterloo. The reader can consult the copious histories extant of these things, as illustrations of our subject, and of the meaning of the words, “our God is a consuming fire.”