in point of time, jointly furnish a complete prophetic history of the Western Apostasy during the whole period of the 1260 years, under all the three woetrumpets. It principally however exhibits the corruptions of Popery under the two first woetrumpets: the third is but briefly touched upon, and that only to prevent a break in the period of 1260 years. As the little book comprehends the Jeremiah dwells upon the third part of the harvest, the threshing; while St. John selects the imagery of the first part, the reaping: yet I cannot but think, that the context of both passages sufficiently shews, that a harvest of judgment, not of mercy, is intended. The apocalyptic harvest, both by its chronologically preceding the vintage, and by its being confined to the earth or the Roman empire, cannot denote either the general in-gathering of Judah and Israel, or the universal influx of the gentiles to the millennian church and since, like the vintage, it is exclusively confined to the idolatrous and persecuting Roman empire, since in both cases the sickle is equally thrust into this empire; I feel myself compelled to conclude, that, like the vintage, it denotes some signal judgment. This judgment I suppose to be the first part of the third woe; a woe, which must be expected to mark a period in history no less striking than the successive founding of the Saracenic and Turkish empires; a woe, which is ushered in by an event no less singular than definite, the full of a tenth part of the great Roman city, or of one of the ten original Gothico-Roman monarchies by an earthquake. This judgment in short I suppose to be the horrors of the second French revolution and its immediate consequences, commencing on the 12th of August 1792, and ushered in by the fall of the monarchy both arbitrary and limited which at that time was the only one that remained of the ten original kingdoms; a revolution, which in those consequences, or (to adopt the prophetic phraseology) during the reaping of the harvest of the earth, has been felt to the remotest parts of the Roman empire. whole whole of this period, a point which itself repeatedly insists upon*, it was necessary to notice, the sounding of the third woo-trumpet; the six first vials of which, like the two first woes, are included in the 1260 years †. The prophet therefore does no«. tice it, briefly informing us that it should be immediately preceded, and as it were introduced, by a great earthquake which should occasion, the fall of a tenth part of the Latin city; and that it should principally consist of two tremendous manifestations of God's wrath, two seasons of peculiar misery, the harvest and the vintage. A more particular account of these matters he reserves for future consideration under the pouring out of the seven vials: and the account itself he places, not in the little book, but in the larger book of the Apocalypse, inasmuch as it concerns not merely the western but likewise the eastern Apostasy, and affects indeed more or less even the whole world. The 15th chapter of the Revelation therefore must be considered as chronologically succeeding the 9th, the intermediate chapters being a parenthetical history of the West, and constituting what St. John terms a little book together with an introduction to it. In the 9th chapter, we have an account of the two first woes in the East : * See Rev. xi. 2, 3. xii.6, 14. xiii. 5. + The last vial, or that which contains the season of the vintage, seems to be poured out as soon as the 1260 years expire; and it coincides with what Daniel calls the time of the end, or the period of God's great controversy with the nations. A in the 15th, the prophet begins to describe the Hence it is manifest, that effects of the last woe. the intermediate space must space must necessarily be occupied by the little book and its introduction. Let us now attend the prophet in his account of the effusion of the vials, which are all comprehended under the third woe, and which must be divided into three classes: the vials of the harvest, the intermediate vials, and the vial of the vintage. CHAPTER XI. Concerning the effects of the last woe-trumpet, the pouring out of the seven vials, and the restoration of the Jews. THE prophet, having separately detailed the effects of the two first woe-trumpets in the East and in the West, and having briefly touched upon the sounding of the third, now proceeds to give us a more full account of the miseries which it should produce. For this purpose he divides it into seven periods, which he distinguishes by the pouring out of seven vials; and, to shew us that they are all comprehended under the last woe-trumpet the commencement of the blast of which he had already announced, he styles them the seven last plagues. They are in fact the same, I apprehend, as the seven thunders, the roll of which St. John heard, when he had finished his account of the second woe-trumpet as afflicting the East. Conceiving rightly that in point of time they were the next in order to the events which he had last detailed, he seems to have supposed that he was immediately to to write their history: but the great angel, having yet to reveal to him the contemporary effects of the two first woe-trumpets in the West and to bring down the second woe-trumpet to its complete termination, commanded him to "seal them up "and to write them not;" swearing solemnly by the Almighty, that "the time should not be yet, "but that the mystery of God should be even "finished in the days of the voice of the seventh "angel." Those days are now come. We have seen, that the great earthquake at the close of the second woe is the French revolution in the year 1789 and we have likewise seen, that the third woe came quickly after in the year 1792, when the reign of Gallic liberty and equality commenced. Then it was, that the voice of the seventh angel, or the third woe-angel, began to be heard: consequently we may then expect, that the seven thunders would begin to roar, and that the seven vials full of the last plagues of an offended God would begin to be poured out*. The Mr. Whitaker thinks, that the last woe-trumpet or the seventh trumpet is the same as the last trump at the day of judgment mentioned by St. Paul. I have not met with any commentator who agrees with him in this opinion, except Daubuz and the Jesuit Cornelius à Lapide. As for the vials, he supposes many of them to have been long since poured out; and maintains that they will all be poured out before the sounding of the last woe," after which he has never been taught to look for "any thing but the resurrection and its awful consequences." Thus he plainly makes the seven last plagues precede the last Сс VOL. II. zoe; |