8. Historical Exposition
The peace of Tilsit had completely extended the new Frank domination over the Continent of Europe. By the judgments of the fourth vial thus far developed, Prussia was reduced by one-half; the two kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemburg were erected as a barrier against Austria; and the two feudatory kingdoms of Saxony and p. 513 Westphalia, as a counterpoise to Prussia. Russia remained the only power untouched, though scathed. The Man of Destiny followed more and more the steps of Charlemagne. He had caused on the day of his coronation, the crown, the sword, and the sceptre of Charlemagne to be carried before him. But, unlike Charlemagne, who went to Rome to be crowned by the Pope, he caused the pope to come to him in Paris, not to crown, but to consecrate his dynasty in the estimation of the worshipers of the Beasts’s Image; and modeled his new states upon the vast empire of that conqueror. The object of the resurrected and ascended witnesses of the Revolution of 1789, had been to destroy the Beast and his Image, in the re-establishment of the liberty of peoples; it had made citizens, and changed Europe into republics—a state of things in no way typical of the future permanent results of the postresurrectional labors of the Saints, when under the command of “the Prince of princes,” they shall have finished and rested from their labors. The work of the Revolution was simply transitional. The subversion of the ancient political order by a republican policy, prepared the way for what followed. Napoleon established a new military hierarchy, turned citizens into vassals, and transformed republics into fiefs. Potent and energetic as he was, and appearing upon the stage after a shock that had shaken the world to its centre and perfectly paralyzed it, he was enabled for a season to arrange it as he pleased. Thus the “great empire” grew up, with a civil discipline at home, which rendered France as obsequious as an army; and abroad, with its secondary kingdoms, its confederate states, its grand fiefs, and its supreme chief, “emperor,” “mediator,” “protector,” and “king;” a perfect type of that greater and more glorious empire to be established by the Lord Jesus and his Brethren, as the result of “the war of the great day of the almighty Deity,” which pervades the period of the seventh vial. Napoleon no longer experienced any resistance, and his commands were obeyed from one extremity of the European Continent to the other. The imperial power was at this moment at its maximum; and England, which had then eleven hundred vessels of war, was the only power that resisted his will.
At this crisis, as if to manifest his contempt, and to mark his defiance of all the potentates of Europe, Napoleon gave an extraordinary proof of confidence in the plenitude of his power, in the publication of the following decree, which signalized the approaching outpouring of the Fifth Vial, dated May, 1808. “Whereas the temporal sovereign of Rome has refused to make war against England, and the interest of the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples ought not to be intercepted by a hostile power; and whereas the donation of p. 514 Charlemagne, our illustrious predecessor, of the countries which form the Holy See, was for the good of Christianity, and not for that of the enemies of our holy religion: We therefore decree, that the duchies of Urbino, Ancona, Macerata and Camerino, be forever united to the kingdom of Italy: to which kingdom all cardinal prelates and natives of these districts are commanded to return by the 5th of June, on pain of confiscation of goods.” This singular and salutary exercise of despotic power called forth a declaration from the Pope in which he maintained the rights of his See, and earnestly protested against the intended spoliation. This, however, did not prevent the entry of a French army, which took possession of all the strong places in the ecclesiastical territories. And this was followed by the annexation of Parma, Placentia, and Tuscany to the French empire; so that the kingdom of Italy was now guarded on every side by the empire.
After the lapse of some months, the Pope’s protest was enforced by a sentence of excommunication against the authors and instruments of the act of spoliation. This was productive of new violence on the part of Napoleon, his “most dear son in Christ!” In 1809, the wrath of the fifth vial at length descended upon “the throne” itself. Its pontifical occupant, the Name of Blasphemy upon the Seven Heads of the Beast-Dominion, was arrested by his order, and brought as a captive to Avignon, in fulfillment of the saying, “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity”—ch. xiii. 10. But this was not all. A provisional government was established in the ecclesiastical states; the Inquisition was abolished; many temporal and spiritual abuses were abrogated; and various civil and judicial reforms were introduced. Rome itself, wonderfully improved and embellished in the hands of the Great Emperor, was degraded by decree from a sovereign to a subject rank. It was declared to be the second city of the New Empire; and empowered to send seven members to the Legislative Body; and a deputation, arriving from thence at Paris, presented an address of homage, to which Napoleon replied in the style and language of an emperor of the West.
We have seen already that in the outpouring of the wrath of the third vial its plagues reached even to Rome; and that the papal states were transformed into the Roman Republic, in February 1798, when the Pope’s temporal reign was declared to be at an end. On that occasion, the French ambassador wrote to general Buonaparte, “the payment of thirty millions (of francs) stipulated by the treaty of Tolentino, has totally exhausted this old carcass; we are making it consume by a slow fire.” It was on the 15th of February, while seated on his throne, and receiving the congratulatory worship p. 515 of his cardinals, that the Pope was arrested by the French military, the ring of his marriage with the Romish Church torn from his finger; his palace rifled, and himself carried prisoner into France, where, he died in August, 1799. All the territorial possessions of the church and monasteries were confiscated; all the sacerdotal vestments of the Pope and Cardinals were burnt; and the Pope’s library, museum, furniture, and jewels, pillaged. This was a making of the Mother City “desolate and naked, eating her flesh, and burning her with fire;” not by the ten horns, however, but by the Revolution, as an earnest of what is yet to follow, at the hands of the Saints. But Rome was still the sovereign city of a Roman State, though it had lost its imperialism. But even this was soon after restored to her. Buonaparte’s absence in Egypt, and the temporary success of the allies under the “invincible Suwarrow,” enabled the worshipers of the Beast’s Image to elect a new pope, Pius VII., March 13, 1800; and to repair for a time, the ruin of the papal throne. Buonaparte’s usurpation, and his restoration of Romanism in France, excited the hopes of the Pope, with whom he made a concordat in 1801. But they proved quickly delusive. “The designs of Napoleon,” says Ranke, “were now (in 1805) revealed. The Constituent Assembly had endeavored to emancipate itself entirely from the pope. The Directory wished to annihilate his authority. Buonaparte’s notion was to retain him, but in a state of absolute subjection; to make him a tool of his own boundless ambition.” After a while he was permitted to return to Rome. But, on his resistance to Napoleon’s views, there followed in 1809, the outpouring of the wrath of the fifth vial upon the throne, originally given to him by the Dragon (ch. xiii. 3), in consequence of which the Roman State was abolished, and there was neither republic nor kingdom upon the Seven Hills.
The occasion of this disaster to the Pope was his sympathy with heretical England, then campaigning against the French in Spain, a diversion to their arms, which afforded Austria another opportunity of trying to restore the shattered fortunes of the Beast’s kingdom. This obstinate and determined champion of the Image, seized the opportunity of Napoleon’s absence and that of his army in Spain, and determined to make one more powerful effort for the re-estabment of the old order of the European world. A hundred and fifty thousand worshipers of the Beast’s Image were marched into the field of blood and fire, and began the campaign in the spring of 1809. The Tyrolese rose in rebellion; king Jerome Buonaparte was expelled by the Westphalians; Italy was wavering, and Prussia was only waiting a reverse in the fortunes of the Great Emperor once more to take up arms. The campaign of the fifth vial commenced on the p. 516 18th of April. On the 22d, the French and Austrians met in long and obstinate conflict at Eckmuhl. The slaughter was great, and the darkness of night alone rescued the Austro-Beast’s forces from ruin.. After this, Napoleon advanced rapidly upon Vienna, the city of the Beast’s Dragonic Mouth (ch. xiii. 11; xvi. 13), the Imperial Aulic Council—into which, on the 10th of May, he once more entered as a conqueror. As Napoleon used to say, “the hand of God leads my armies.” This was true; they were so led, until the mission marked out for him apocalyptically was accomplished. On the 5th of July, the Austrians stationed at WAGRAM, were surprised and disconcerted by the appearance of the whole French army in order of battle. Next day at sunrise, the contest began, and continued till night. The result of the renewal of the battle was the dispersion and almost ruin of the Austrian armies, and the reduction ot the Pope’s Protector to a forlorn and hopeless condition. Austria sued for peace, which was granted, and signed at the palace of Schœnbrunn, the headquarters of Napoleon.
This notable opening of the campaign of the fifth vial by the conquest of the fifth coalition, was the military occasion of the issuing of his decrees from Schœnbrunn and Vienna for the humbling and spoliation of the Romish Mother and her Pope; which he had been threatening to do from the time of his triumphant entry into Berlin, in November, 1806. At this crisis he had an interview with the Papal Nuncio at Dresden in the Cabinet of Frederick the Great; and alluding to the refusal of Pius VII. to exclude the English from the Papal States, and to declare war against them, in spite of flattery, coaxing, intimidation, and the most fearful threats, he said, as related in M. D’Hausonville’s work, L’Eglise Romaine et le Premier Empire:
“The Pope is a holy man, who is made to believe all that they (Napoleon’s enemies) think fit to tell him. They have presented to him my demands under a false light, just as Cardinal Gonsalvi did; and thus the good Pope gets angry, and says he will let himself be killed rather than yield. Who wants to kill him? good Heavens! But if he does not do as I would have him, most assuredly I shall take from him the temporal domain of Rome, but I shall always respect him as Head of the Church. There is no necessity for the Pope to be the Sovereign of Rome. The holiest Popes were not so. I shall make him an excellent allowance—3,000,000f. a year—that he may suitably represent his office. I shall place at Rome a King or a senator, and I shall cut up his states into so many duchies. What I want is that the Pope shall accede to the Confederation, and that he shall be the friend of my friend and the enemy of my enemies. I am the protector of the Church, and the Pope must be with me if he p. 517 wishes to remain a sovereign; and certainly he may continue to be so if he acts as I wish him, because I have never intended, as he has been told, to take away from him the sovereignty of Rome. To come to the point, I have sent for you to tell you to quit Dresden in three days, and to signify peremptorily to the Pope that he must enter into the Confederation.”
The Bishop replied:
“Your Majesty will permit me to repeat what I have already said, that the Pope being the common Father of the Faithful, cannot separate from some to attach himself to others; and that his ministry being a ministry of peace, he cannot make war on anybody, nor declare himself the enemy of anyone whatever without failing in his duties and compromising his sacred character.”
The Emperor said:
“But I do not want him to make war on any one. I want him to shut his ports against the English, and to exclude them from his States, and that, as he is not able to defend his ports and his fortresses, he shall give them to me to defend. People have lost their heads at Rome. There are no longer any great men there, as in the time of Leo X. Ganganelli would not have acted so. How can the Pope imagine that I will consent to have between my Kingdom of Italy and that of Naples ports and fortresses which, in time of war, may be occupied by the English, and may endanger the security of my States and my people? I want to be secure in my own house, for the whole of Italy belongs to me by right of conquest. The Pope has not crowned me as King, but as Emperor of France, and I succeed, not to the rights of Kings, but to those of Charlemagne. If I allow Sovereigns to be in Italy, it is not that they should favor my enemies and give me cause of disquiet. I want you to tell all that to the Pope, and explain to him his real interests, I had better intentions with regard to the Pope. I should have carried them out, and may yet do so; but he prefers being miserable and obstinate. If you are fortunate enough to persuade him, you do him a great service. I warn you, however, that all must be settled by the 1st of January, (it was then the 12th of November). Either the Pope will consent, and in that case will lose nothing, or he will refuse, and in this case I shall take his States from him. Excommunications are no longer in fashion, and my soldiers will not refuse to march whithersoever I bid them. Remember Charles V., who kept the Pope prisoner, and had prayers said for him at Madrid. I will do the same if I am driven to it. The Pope should not forget that I have raised up the altars in France; that I have restored religion; that I protect it in Germany, and that I shall continne to do so. Almost the whole of p. 518 Catholicity is under my sceptre. The hand of God leads my armies, and this apparently is what displeases the Pope. He wants to cross me in every way. In Italy, in France, I have done much for the bishops and the priests. Everybody is content; but Rome is angry. It is not the Pope’s fault; it is Antonelli’s, and that other Cardinal he brought with him to Paris—how do you call him? Oh, aye!—Di Pietro. Di Pietro is an obstinate theologian who has no-political views. The Pope complains of his poverty, and that he has not wherewith to go on. It is his own fault. I have paid (and more than I ought) the expenses of the first passage of my troops. I would have paid the second, the third—all the rest; but he wants to quarrel. Well, then, let them do so. I shall pay nothing more, Let the Pope only do as I would have him, and he shall be paid for the past and for the future.”
Yes, Rome was angry, and the Pope persisted in his refusal. It is true, that excommunications were out of fashion; but angry and imbecile Rome, upon whom all experience is lost, still had faith in folly. Pius VII. hurled his mimic thunder against the emperor on June 10, 1809: but the Papal Jupiter had lost all his thunderbolts, so that the only party injured was his lying and blaspheming self. It was received with ridicule, and an order for his arrest. He was carried off prisoner to Savona, where he was detained nearly two years. While there he conceded the main point required by Napoleon, as stated in a Brief, bearing date Aug. 5, 1811, the preliminary condition of which was his separation for ever from Rome. On the approach of a British fleet, he was removed from Savona, Jan. 1812, to Fontainbleau. The Archiepiscopal palace of Paris had been repaired for his reception; for it was Napoleon’s policy and intention to fix him and the Papal See in that abode: so that he could have “the False Prophet” (ch. xvi. 13; xix. 20) then no longer the Image of the Beast, under his own eye and restraint in the New Capital of Catholicity. But, the sudden and wonderful overthrow of Napoleon’s power prevented the establishment of his purpose. In 1814, “Catholicity having deserted him,” says De Pradt, “four heretical kings (Russia, Prussia, England, and Sweden) bore the Pope back to Rome.”
Thus, as the result of the terrible plagues of these vials the kingdom of the beast was darkened, but not destroyed. The power of Napoleon, the Scorcher of the Beast, began to wane after he had executed the divine purpose of blotting out his Roman throne. He had divorced Josephine, and allied himself to the sanguinary and heaven-cursed pope-protecting house of Austria, by marriage with Maria Louisa, in March, 1810; and now, in 1812, with the Anglo-Spanish war upon his hands, he proceeded to precipitate the armies of Europe p. 519 upon the Magogian empire of Rosh, Meshech, and Tobl. In alliance with Prussia and Austria, which engaged to assist him with very considerable forces, he began the fatal invasion of Gog’s dominion with a mighty host of six hundred thousand men. On the 17th of August, after a furious contest at Smolensko, the Russians retired from the city, which they left to the French burning and in ruins. On the 7th of September the two armies, the Russian of two hundred and twenty thousand, and the French of a hundred thousand, met at Borodino. Seventy thousand Russians, and forty thousand French, killed and wounded, lay upon the field. Moscow, the capital of Meshech, was evacuated by order of its governor, Rostopchin; and two hundred thousand human beings, of both sexes, and of every age, became wanderers, preparatory to its conflagration. Napoleon arrived at the Kremlin, and was now at the zenith of his fortune. Fire burst forth in every direction. In speaking of it, he said, “this terrible conflagration ruined every thing. I was prepared for all but this: it was unforseen; for who would have thought that a nation would have set its capital on fire? It was a spectacle of a sea and billows of fire, a sky and clouds of flame; mountains of red rolling flames, like immense waves of the sea, alternately bursting forth, and elevating themselves to skies of fire, and then sinking into the ocean of flame below. Oh, it was the most grand, the most sublime, and most terrific sight the world ever beheld!”
His retreat from Moscow was most disastrous. The wrath of the fourth and fifth vials descended upon the hosts drawn from, the nations worshiping the Beast’s Image with terrible effect. They perished by thousands from cold, famine, pestilence, and war; so that, according to Segur, only a sixth part re-crossed the Russian frontier. He had lost an army, the most formidable, perhaps, that any nation had ever brought into the field. The wars of modern Europe had furnished no instance of so extensive and complete a destruction; nor ever will again until Gog himself shall fall upon the mountains of Israel under the outpouring of the wrath of the sixth vial: nor does history record any event like it since Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, B.C. 481.
This terrible destruction of the hosts led by Napoleon, was followed by the invasion of France by the British, who had expelled his armies from Portugal and Spain: and by the Russians, Prussians, and Swedes forming a sixth coalition for the restoration of the ancient order of things. The die was now cast; and the tide of events was turned. The priests, the men having “the sign of the Beast in their right hand” (ch. xiii. 16) secretly conspired against him since his rupture with the Blasphemer of the Seven Hills; and the humiliated p. 520 dynasties aspired to restore themselves. Negotiation had been tried, but failed; so that nothing but the outpouring of more wrath could determine the result. Deprived of the support of the people, who, in 1814, were mere spectators of the last act of the drama, Napoleon stood alone against the world, with a handful of veteran soldiers, aided by his genius, which had lost nothing of its audacity and vigor. He had to contend with the grand allied army of three hundred and eighty thousand men, marching from the north and east under Schwartzenberg by way of Switzerland; Blucher, by way of Frankfort; and Bernadotte, by way of Belgium—all aiming to concentrate upon Paris. Napoleon dexterously placed himself between Blucher and Schwartzenberg; he flew from one army to another, and beat them both in succession. His combinations were so powerful, his activity so great, and manœuvres so certain, that he appeared on the point of entirely disorganizing these formidable armies, and by the annihilation of them to put an end to the coaliton.
But if he conquered wherever he was present himself, the enemy gained ground wherever he was absent. He was badly and treacherously supported by his generals. At length Paris, the only capital of the Continent which had not been invaded during the awful outpouring of these terrible vials; now beheld the hosts of all Europe entering upon its plains, and on the point of undergoing the common humiliation. It capitulated in the absence of Napoleon, March 31st, 1814, just 1260 years after the settlement of Italy by Justinian’s Pragmatic Sanction, A. D. 554. Eleven days after, perceiving that further resistance was fruitless, he surrendered, and he renounced for himself and his children the thrones of France and Italy; and on the 20th of April, withdrew from the Continent to his little principality of Elba.
But, the worshipers of the Beast’s Image, assembled in congress at Vienna, soon found, that between this minister of heaven’s wrath upon blasphemers, and them, there could be neither truce nor peace. The astounding fact was communicated to them by Talleyrand, that the Exile of Elba had returned to France; that the Bourbon they had set up for king had fled; and that Napoleon was reinstated on the throne! They roared every one with the laughter of dæmons at the news; their merriment, however, did not last long—the event was too pregnant of mischief to be sported with. They threatened him with public vengeance as the enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world. All Europe now rang with preparations for war. Napoleon offered them peace, and to abide by the treaty of Paris; but his offers were disregarded: the Seven Spirits of the Deity had not energized him for peace; but to scorch the men of the p. 521 Beast with fire: they had not yet had enough of this; therefore their hearts were hardened; and Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, in a seventh and last coalition, decided again to try the arbitrament of fire and sword.
The result of this appeal was the victory of Waterloo, June 18, 1815. The loss on both sides was immense; and all concerned “were scorched with great heat.” It was the last battle of him to whom “it was given to scorch the men” obnoxious to divine wrath for their blasphemies and evil deeds, “with fire.” Perceiving that he was no longer the object of public confidence, he declared his conviction that his political life was terminated, and again abdicated the imperial crown on the 22nd of June, having issued a farewell address to the army, he left Paris on the 29th for Rochefort, intending to embark for the United States, but being unable to elude the vigilance of the English cruisers, and apprehensive of falling into the hands of the Russians, Prussians, and Austrians, whom he had so dreadfully “scorched” he surrendered to the British on the 15th of July, and claimed their protection. The island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic was assigned to him as his future residence by the Allied Powers. This was the sinking of “the sun of France” into the darkness of the shadow of death. His energetic protest against it was unheeded. He arrived there in safety in the fall of 1815; and, after a rest, from his thundering and scathing labors, of over five years, he expired on the 5th of May, 1821.
9. Napoleon “the Great” a Type of Christ the Man of War: or the Events of the Hour, a Type of the Hour of Judgment
“And the same hour there was a great earthquake”—ch. xi. 13. This “same hour” is characterized as that in which the Two Tormenting Prophets, having risen from three lunar days and a half of years of political death, ascended to the possession of terrific power in the government, or heaven, in the sight of their enemies. The “three days and a half, and the 1260 days of their sackcloth prophesying, styled in ch. xi. 6, εν ἡμεραις αυτων της προφητειας in their days of the prophecy, both ended together. The common terminus of these two periods was A. D. 1789-’90; and signalized the commencement of the “same hour,” or twelfth part of “a time,” equal to thirty years. These ended with the beginning of the outpouring of the sixth vial, and the death of the “Man of Destiny,” who had figured so gigantically in the ministration of the wrath of the third, p. 522 fourth, and fifth vials. As the Hour began with the ending of one prophetic period, so it ended with the termination of another—the 1290 days of Dan. xii. 11. It was an hour of judgment upon the Beast, to “slay it, and to give its body” politic to “the burning flame;” but not the hour. Between “a” or “an,” and “the,” there is all the difference existing between type and antitype, shadow and substance. Napoleon, “the most gigantic being of modern times,” was a man of destiny, but not the Man of Destiny; who is indeed yet to appear, and before whose almightiness the gigantic proportions of Napoleon’s glory and renown will shrink into the dwarfish insignificance of a babe. Still, as compared with other mortals, “this extraordinary man, whose name for twice seven years had filled the world with wonder and amazement,” was a giant of immense proportions, contending for universal monarchy, which, for a moment, in the Beast’s territory, he may be said to have realized. He was the man of the hour, whose tormenting pains and ulcers caused their victims to “gnaw their tongues,” as the earnest, or instalment, of that more terrible torment that awaits them in “the Hour of Judgment,” in the presence of the Lamb—ch. xiv. 10, 11.
The Hour of Judgment, in which “the Man of War” celebrated by Moses in his song, develops himself as the Man of Destiny, is characterized in its incipiency, by the preparation of a people to whom judgment may be given. This preparation, which is antitypical of that in 1789-’90, and at the termination also of a symbolic period of 1260 days, consists in a resurrection and ascension process. This resurrection and ascension are greater than the resurrection and ascension of the two tormenting prophets; for the antitype and substance are always grander and more intrinsically important than type and shadow. The earth is to be made to cast out, or bring forth, literally, the feeble; but poetically, the dead — ארץ רפאים תפּיל, ārĕtz rĕphāim tapil—Isai. xxvi. 19. These feeble ones all appear before the βημα bēma, or tribunal of justice; not before the θρονος, throne, or seat of dominion: and there, having been previously made capable of so doing, by the impressment of their identity, they every one give account of themselves to Christ, “the Judge of the living and dead.” The approved among them being accepted as “holy, and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight,” are arrayed in the symbolical “fine linen pure and bright”—that is, what Paul terms in Rom. viii. 11; 1 Cor. xv. 54 and 2 Cor. v. 4, το θνητον, to thnēton, “the mortal” is quickened in the twinkling of an eye; and in this momentary operation, raised from corruption to incorruption; from dishonor to glory; from weakness or feebleness to power; from earthiness to spirituality: so that, being clothed upon with p. 523 the house from heaven, “THE MORTAL” is “swallowed up of the life”—ἵνα καταποθη το θνητον ὑπο της ζωης. The life-power which descends upon it, permeates it in all its substance; so that “the “corruptible” becomes incorruptible, and “the mortal” becomes immortal; and the raising of the “building from the Deity, the house not made with hands,” is complete.
The people thus prepared, the Firstfruits redeemed from among men for the Deity and the Lamb, in whose mouth was found no guile, stand faultless before the throne of dominion, and become sharers in it. They ascend to power, and in the prophetic vision are seen standing upon Mount Zion with the Father’s Name impressed upon their foreheads—ch. xiv. 1-5. As for the rest of the feeble earthborns, they are deemed unworthy to be raised to “glory, honor, incorruptibility, and life.” Their record is unclean. They are convicted liars, hypocrites, deceivers, and seducers, who have “held the truth in unrighteousness;” and walked faithlessly in the prejudices and conceits of their corrupt nature. Having thus, and in many other ways, proved themselves enemies of the cross of Christ, and sowers to their flesh, they are sentenced to reap according to their sowing. They are repudiated by the Man of Destiny, who indignantly expels them from his presence as unworthy to share with him in the throne of his glory.
Having thus separated the wheat from the chaff, and gathered the former into his barn, he confers upon his accepted brethren the honor of coöperating with him in the execution of “the judgment written;” and of accompanying him whithersoever he goes in the work, not merely of casting a dark shadow over the kingdom and throne of the Beast, as under the fifth vial; but of effectually and finally slaying the Beast, and destroying his body, and giving it to the burning flame—Dan. vii. 11. Napoleon’s work in his hour, assisted by his talented generals, was the type, or shadow cast before, of the work yet to be performed by Christ, the Man of War, and his brethren in arms, upon the same beast, under the Seventh Vial, and in the terrible hour of his judgments. Napoleon and his marshals at the head of the French, was the shadowy representation in real life of the scene exhibited in chap. xix. of this prophecy, where Christ, the Faithful and True Warrior, is seen with his Brethren at the head of the Jewish white horse (Zech. x. 3), making righteous judicial war upon the same enemies, the worshipers of the Beast and his Image, that Napoleon scorched so effectively. And further, when his work was consummated, where among the Powers was the Papacy? It was nowhere. For about six years, the Papacy had no place in the Napoleonic Empire; neither in the antitypical dominion of Jesus p. 524 and his Brethren will such a curse and blasphemy be tolerated. Napoleon effected a temporary abolition of it, and deprived Rome of its sovereignty for a while; but Christ Jesus, the king-breaker and king-maker of the future judicial hour, will abolish it forever, and sink Rome in the unfathomable abyss of fire, to be “found no more at all”
Seven thunders, styled “Coalitions,” were organized against the French by the Powers of the world. These, however, were not the Seven Thunders whose utterances John was commanded not to write. The former were only the shadows of the future coalitions that will be formed against the King of the Jews, for the like purpose for which they were formed against the Emperor of the French, as being “the enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world, and hostile to its civil and social relations.” Napoleon and Jesus Christ are both chargeable with this hostility. The tranquillity of the Beast and his Image, and the perpetuity of their dynastic, civil, and social, institutions and relations, are doubtless highly desirable to all who profit by them. But, it is contrary to the divine purpose that the wicked be at peace. The Deity hath decreed that there is no peace for them. It is only to the righteous that abundance of peace is promised. He therefore raised up Napoleon, and strengthened him by his power; and hath raised and exalted Jesus, and made him strong; and will send him again into the world under the sixth vial, to take peace far away from the worshipers of the Beast’s Image; and to destroy them and their institutions, by “the energy whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.” Coalition after coalition will, doubtless, be formed against him; but, they will only serve, as under the third, fourth and fifth, vials, to bring their hosts up to the field of slaughter; that they may be “tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.”
I cannot suppose, that these resemblances between Napoleon’s Hour, and Christ’s Hour, of judgment, can be accidental. I am persuaded rather, that they are designed, and that the one series is prefigurative of the other. Cyrus, in his conquest of Babylon, restoration of Judah, and laying the foundation of the temple, was a type of Christ in future and similar undertakings: Constantine “the Great” in the conquest of the “great red dragon,” whom he ejected from the heaven; and in his deliverance of the church from his sanguinary power, was also a type of Christ in his yet future work of slaying the scarlet-colored beast, delivering his downtrodden people, binding the Dragon, and shutting him in the abyss: and I am satisfied, that Napoleon “the Great” should be associated with them in p. 525 their typical relation to him. The parallel between Napoleon and Christ is still further remarkable in this, that they both were plebeian and poor in their beginning; and commanded by their wonderful works the attention and admiration of mankind. They were both friends of Israel, and enemies of their oppressors; Christ was born to be a king, and therefore a military commander, which Napoleon became by extraordinary ability and success. They both entered upon their career in youth, to the confusion of the wise and prudent. Christ is the Mediator of the Commonwealth of Israel; Napoleon was the legally constituted Mediator of the Helvetic Commonwealth. Napoleon was king of Italy, emperor of Europe, and “Protector of the Church;” Christ is King of Israel, the destined Emperor of the world, and Protector of the Faithful in all future time. Napoleon abolished the ancient dynasties, gave their thrones to his brothers and relations, and darkened the kingdom and throne of the beast; Christ will abolish all dynasties, will give their thrones to his Brethren, and destroy finally the same kingdom and throne: Napoleon suppressed the Papacy; Christ will destroy it, and leave not a wreck behind. In fine, I know not how the reader may view these things, but for myself, I see in the transformation of Europe under the first, third, fourth, and fifth vials; and in the military development, constitution, and triumph of the Napoleonic empire, a shadowy representation in real life of the approaching transformation of the world: and of the military development, dynastic constitution, and victorious establishment of the kingdom and empire of Christ and his Brethren, by the concluding judgments of the sixth, and all the plagues of the seventh, vials. There is an universal monarchy in these vials, whose judgments are not only destructive, but formative; and whose sovereignty will command and compel the obedience of all peoples, nations, languages, and rulers, to earth’s utmost bounds—Dan. vii. 14, 27; Ps. ii. 8, 9. “Hitherto is the end of the matter:” and a glorious consummation it will be.
10. The Papal Image-Worshipers Blasphemous and Unrepentant
“And they gnawed their tongues for the pain; and blasphemed the Name of the Deity, who hath power over these plagues, and they repented not to give glory to him, And they blasphemed the Deity of the heaven because of their pains, and because of their ulcers; and they repented not of their works.”—Vers. 8, 11.
The intense sufferings of the Beast’s Image-worshipers under the outpouring of the wrath of the fourth and fifth vials, is forcibly expressed by the saying, “they gnawed their tongues for the pain.” Illustrative of their great misery, Sir Walter Scott’s account is appropriate. p. 526 “The French army,” says he, “was poured into some foreign country by forced marches; without any previous arrangement of stores or magazines for their maintenance; and with the purpose of maintaining them solely at the expense of the inhabitants. This species of war was carried on at the least possible expense to his (Napoleon’s) treasury; but at the greatest possible expenditure of human life, and the incalculable increase of human misery.” “The officers gave the soldiers authority to secure supplies by what was called la maraude, or plunder. When marching through a thinly peopled country, or when the natives and peasants offered resistance, then the soldiers became irritated at the danger they sometimes incurred in collecting provisions. Relentless and reckless, besides indulging in every species of violence, they increased their own distresses by destroying what they could not use. Famine and sickness were not long in visiting an army which traversed by forced marches a country exhausted of provisions. These stern attendants followed the French columns as they straggled on. Without hospitals and without magazines, every straggler who could not regain his ranks fell a victim to hunger, to weather, to weariness, or the vengeance of an incensed peasantry. In this manner the French army suffered woes, which till these tremendous wars had never been the lot of troops in hostilities carried on between civilized nations.”
As a specimen of the sufferings of non-combatant inhabitants of the Beast’s territory on the actual scene of hostilities, the following extracts, borrowed by certain writers from official Reports, published by a committee in London, descriptive of the calamities consequent upon the campaign of Leipsic in 1813, may suffice. In a letter from the city of Leipsic, dated Nov. 1813, and addressed to the British Nation, the writers say:
“We have before our eyes many thousands of the adjacent villages and hamlets—landed proprietors, farmers, ecclesiastics, schoolmasters, and artizans of every description—who were some weeks since in circumstances more or less easy, but now without a home, stripped of their all, and with their families perishing of hunger. All around is one wide waste. The numerous villages and hamlets are almost all entirely or partially reduced to ashes.”
Again;—“The destruction and distress which marked the countries through which the French army fled from the bloody fields of Leipsic were altogether indescribable. Dead bodies covered the roads. Half consumed French soldiers were found in the ruins of the villages destroyed by the flames. Whole districts were depopulated by disease. For a month after the retreat no human being, no domestic p. 527 animal, no poultry, nay, not even a sparrow was to be met with: only ravens in abundance were to be seen, feeding on corpses.”
And again;—“On the borders of Silesia seventy villages have been, almost entirely destroyed.” “In Upper Lusatia the whole tract between Bautzen and Galitz, which has been repeatedly traversed by the marches and countermarches of the armies, is reduced to a desert.”
“At Hamburg 50,000 inhabitants, or perhaps, even 70,000, have left, and in part been driven from their homes; destitute of all means, and literally starving for want of the common necessaries of life. From the hospitals and infirmaries old and weak persons were driven in herds out of the Altona gate. Some having been long unaccustomed to the air, and exposed half naked to a cold of 19°, turned mad.”
Such were the “pains” and “ulcers” which tormented the inhabitants of all the countries of Papal and Protestant Europe, as they became in turn the scene of warfare. They were certainly terrific, and calculated to make the subjects of them “gnaw their tongues for the pain;” and, contemplated from a humanitarian stand point, greatly to be deplored. But, when it is remembered, that they were worshipers of an imaginary ghost of a dead woman, they called “the Virgin Mary, and Holy Mother of God;” were Protestant Blasphemers of the Deity’s Name; and the representatives of those who hunted from their homes their “heretical” friends and neighbors whom they burned to death, or drove from the haunts of men, to perish in the woods by hundreds, yea, by thousands, of hunger, nakedness, and cold—when we remember this, we can but say, that they were rightly served; and respond with the voice from the Altar, “Even so, O Lord the almighty Deity, true and righteous are thy judgments!”
“It was the kingdom of the Beast which was darkened”—εγενετο ἡ βασιλεια ἀυτοῦ εσκοτωμενη. Darkened, but not destroyed; for it still exists, and awaits the manifestation of the Ancient of Days to destroy it with “the brightness of his presence”—2 Thess. ii. 8. The darkness which had overshadowed the Beast’s kingdom was dispelled by the events of 1814. The treaty of Paris, which deprived Napoleon of the throne; and that of Vienna of 1815, which reconstituted Europe—afforded “the Holy Alliance” and its sympathizers, an opportunity of showing whether they had learned wisdom and true holiness, by the scorching experience they had passed through. But they soon showed that they had learned nothing in that direction. Wise powers would have argued from the past, that “the Deity of the heaven, who had power over these plagues,” must be highly incensed, p. 528 incensed in the ratio of the severity of the plagues, against Greeks, Latins, and Protestants, represented in the Holy Alliance, by Russia, Austria, and Prusia; and that it behooved them to reform from that system of error so signally condemned by the plagues they had been subjected to. But their legislation evinced that they were as great fools as ever, and as much devoted to the lies and unprofitable vanities of their ancestors, as they were before the calamities and disasters of the past twenty-five years were inaugurated by the resurrection and ascension of the two tormenting prophets, whose scorching representative they had recently dethroned.
“They blasphemed the Name of the Deity of the heaven.” They gave expression to their blasphemy in their deeds. They committed the most blasphemous act against his Name in their power, in reëstablishing upon the Seven Heads, or Mountains, “the Name of Blasphemy.” They delivered the Pope from captivity; and restored to him his pontifical throne and kingdom, which had cost so much human blood and misery to darken. He had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing of his blasphemy. In his proclamation from Cezena, May 5, 1814, a little before reëntering Rome, he characterized himself and his office by the papal title of “the Vicar of the Deity upon earth.” The acts following this reassertion of the old impiety were in blasphemous harmony with it. A few days after the proclamation, he crowned at Ancona, with all the sanctimoniousness of superstition, a “miraculous image of the Virgin,” the duplicate of that at Rome, as the guardian and saviour of Ancona; and decreed its festival, and connected a plenary indulgence with its worship. The Name of the Deity for salvation was superseded as of old, by the merits of the saints of the Romish calendar, and of the phantasm, styled by the worshipers of the image, “the Blessed Mary always a Virgin.” Bible Societies were special objects of papal wrath. They were declared to be tares in the midst of wheat, and wolves in the guise of lambs; while the scriptures themselves circulated by them, unaccompanied by Romish explanations, were denounced by Leo XII. in 1824, as poisonous pastures, and the gospel rather of the devil than of the Deity. And in 1825, he published a Bull of Jubilee, promising to exhibit Christ’s cradle, as an attraction to the pilgrimage; and with authoritative instructions to the pilgrims to call upon the Virgin Mary, as the great advocate for sinners, on that day of grace and mercy. “And they repented not of their works:”—ὃν[?] μετανοησαν, they changed not their old mode of thinking, feeling, and acting in regard to the worship and institutions of the Beast’s Image. The judgments of the Deity are intended to alienate men from their iniquities, and p. 529 to incline them to better things; and when they come to be executed by the saints, the world will learn righteousness—Isai. xxvi. 9: in the absence, however, of such righteous executors of wrath, there is no hope of the world’s repentance, but it will go on to transgress more and more, till the cup of its iniquity overflows.
We have seen in the ninth chapter of this work, that the first and second woes, executed by the Saracens and Euphrateans upon the Greek division of the Apostasy, though they were of intense severity, worked no repentance in the Latins. They beheld Mohammedanism enthroned in the City of the Great Constantine; and the Trinitarian Superstition he had vindicated by the sword in conflict with the Dragon, trampled in the dust by the Moslem; yet in all this, they did not perceive the Deity’s repudiation of catholicism; or, if they did, they would not be instructed and corrected by it. Thus, “the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues,” the Latin catholics of the West, “repented not of the works of their hands”—ch. ix. 20, 21.
From the killing of the Eastern Third by the capture of Constantinople, to the resettlement of Europe by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, three hundred and sixty-two years had elapsed; and notwithstanding the terrible plagues of the past twenty-five years, the Latins, both Romish and Protestant, showed themselves to be as unrepentant of their “works” as ever. These works and deeds are recited in ch. ix. 20, 21; such as idols or images of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which their hands had made, as representatives of the demons, τα δαιμονια, the “disembodied spirits,” they worshiped as guardians, intercessors, ministers of grace, and mediators between Christ and men. The deeds of “the men who had the sign of the beast in their right hand, and in their foreheads,” and who served as priests of these idols, vulgarly styled “the clergy,” and of which they repented not, were murders, sorceries, fornication, thefts. And the people were like their priests. They continued to uphold and sanction all these abominations with the blindest veneration and devotion, till the exhausted patience of the Deity gave place, in 1796, to the terrible outpouring of the third vial, at the hand of his servant Napoleon, who, as “his servant Nebuchadnezzar” on a former occasion, gave the worshipers of images “blood to drink,” and “scorched them with great heat.” But, the events of the third, fourth, and fifth vials have not brought the idolators to repentence; so as to cast their idols which they have made to worship, to the moles and to the bats (Isai. ii. 20); and to abandon their murders, and their sorceries, and their fornication, and their thefts. We have seen how that the restored Pontiff evinced his incurable stupidity and idolatry p. 530 in “solemnly crowning” a Madonna at Ancona, for incorrigible fools to worship. Demons and their images again became the fashionable objects of adoration. They repented not from these; but, in the words of Ranke, “the restored governments of Southern Europe repented of their former insubordination to Rome. They thought they had thus unchained the tempest by which themselves had been overthrown; and beheld in the Pope their natural ally.” Thus, they failed to see the truth; that, instead of this, it was their fellowship with Rome in all its villanies, superstitions, and blasphemies, that brought upon them all the evil by which they had been so dreadfully scorched. In France, the infatuated and demented Bourbons, after their restoration, dedicated their kingdom most especially to the disembodied nonentity, or dæmon, they call the Virgin Mary, as its patroness; they introduced those thieves and murderers, the Jesuits, whose society Pope Clement XIV declared to be a public nuisance; and in his Bull dissolving it, says, that “he who endeavored to let it loose upon society would be chargeable with high treason against the common interests and happiness of his species.” Of this treason the Bourbons were guilty; and by their oppression of antipapalists, showed that the murderous spirit of their ancestor Charles IX, of St. Bartholomew renown, was not yet extinct in them. But, the seed of evil doers is doomed to confusion and contempt. The indignation of the Deity descended upon their incorrigible dynasty, in 1830, and in 1848. The revolution of the former year abolished the elder branch; and the more remarkable one of the latter date, the younger branch of the Capets; to make room for the developments of the Second Napoleonic Empire, whose mission is, not like Napoleon “the Great’s,” to darken the kingdom of the Beast and his Image, but to create by its policy such a situation as is prefigured in ch. xvi. 13, 14, preparatory to the thieflike coming of the great Napoleon’s antitype, YAHWEH TZ’VAOTH, who will resume his work, and refuse peace to the world until the Beast is slain, and his body destroyed; and, with his False Prophet whom he upholds, is given to the burning flame, never more to insult the habitable with their accursed presence.
In Spain, also, “they repented not of their works.” Ferdinand, when restored to the throne, reëstablished both the Jesuits, and the popish “Hell,” styled the Inquisition; and “heretics” were again murdered at the burning stake. The subsequent civil wars, and continually recurring insurrections there, sufficiently indicate the indignation of heaven; and, as an earnest of what is to come, is measurably retributive of the blood of the innocent shed by the “reverend” assassins and thieves of Rome.
p. 531 In Sardinia the King, to whose tender mercies the Waldenses were made over by the treaty of Vienna, for no other reason than because they were Antipapists, revoked their privileges, and multiplied vexations and oppressions upon them. In after years, the king of Sardinia was defeated at Novara, and died an exile in a foreign land; and his son, Victor Emmanuel, now reigns king of Italy, a confederate of the Revolution, and a terror to the Pope.
In Austria, so terribly “scorched with fire,” they repented not. By concordat with Rome, they assumed their former relationship to the “Name of Blasphemy” on the Seven Hills. The Austrian kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia, being adjacent to the Pope’s temporal kingdom, the Austrian Government became the pillar and support of the papal throne—an alliance always fatal, and full of misfortune, to the power so connected. In Austria, the Jesuits became as active as ever in propagating popery, with all its lies and blasphemies. Thus, when the Jesuit Sorcerers in Hungary made any proselytes from protestantism, they made them say that “the Pope cannot err; and that he has full power to forgive or retain sins, and to cast men into hell; that all that he has established, whether out of the Bible or not, is true; that he ought to be honored with similar reverence to that paid to Christ himself; that those who oppose his authority ought to be burned at the stake, and to perish body and soul in hell; that the reading of the scriptures is the origin of all faction and blasphemy; that each priest is greater than the Virgin Mary, because she was the parent of Christ but once, but the priest creates him anew again and again.” Such was the “sorcery” sanctioned by Austria in 1828. Her misfortunes had failed to make her rational; and the fruit of her folly and idiotcy has been reaped in the wrath that has revisited her, and the False Prophet, her ally, upon the Seven Hills, under the judgments concomitant with the outpouring of the Sixth Vial, by which she has been dried up, and her protectorate of the Pope virtually dissolved.
Lastly, in Naples and Tuscany, in short everywhere throughout Roman Antichristendom, the “lying miracles” which had ceased during French ascendancy, were renewed. Such is the testimony of the author of “Rome in the Nineteenth Century.” He remarks that, “not one miracle happened during the whole reign of the French. It was not until the streets were purified with lustrations of holy water, on the return of the Pontiff, that they began to operate again.” When he reappeared in the city, miracles revived. “Within this little month” (April, 1817), says he, “three great miracles have happened in Rome. The last took place yesterday (April 20); when all Rome crowded to the Capitol to see an image of the Virgin open p. 532 her eyes.” And where is Naples now whose guardian dæmon is a nonentity they style “St. Januarius?” And where is Tuscany and its kindred duchies? All swallowed up in the revolutionary kingdom of Italy; and their former demented rulers refugient exiles in foreign lands. Yet have they not eyes to see, that the hand that smites them is divine.
11.—Act VI. The Sixth Vial
12. “And the Sixth Angel poured out his Vial upon the Great River Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up that the way of the Kings who are out of 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 Demons 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 a place which is called Hebraistically ARMAGEDDON.”
Such is the prophecy of the Sixth Vial. The reader will perceive that it divides itself into four sections. First, into the prophecy concerning “the Great River Euphrates;” second, into that concerning the Frogs; third, concerning the Advent and those specially related to it; and fourth, respecting the place into which the Powers that be are gathered for the conflict. This being the order in which its parts are presented in the text, I shall proceed in the exposition, to expound it, in what may be termed, its natural order, and distinguishing its divisions by separate “Parts.”