and on which more hereafter,'-the outpouring is described as taking place of the seventh and last Vial of judgment:-an outpouring it is said on the air, or almosphere, of the Apocalyptic world; the immediate sequel of which was voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and a great earthquake, such as had not been since the men were upon the earth; affecting the sea, or maritime parts, as well as the mainland; causing the disruption of the Great City into three parts, and attended with the plague of a tremendous hailstorm, which however, though so severe, was ineffectual to induce repentance among the people: a yet more terrible judgment being noted as following on Great Babylon (so the great City is here first called); which now at length came up in remembrance before God, "to give to her the cup of the wine of the wrath of his anger.' Of the earlier part of this prefiguration, the sense, translated from symbols into realities, (realities yet future, but apparently quickly coming,) seems to be this: -that after a certain further progress of the three unclean spirits now abroad, (viz. as I conceive, those of infidel democracy, popery, and antichristian priestcraft,) such as to marshal their collective strength in Western Christendom and its colonial dependencies, in hostility against Christ's cause and Gospel, there will arise, all suddenly and fearfully, some extraordinary convulsion, it from and and a costly or precious thing: Mede from excidium, turma. It was probably from one of these words that Megiddo derived its name; a town of Manasseh, famous as the scene of the battle in which the good king Josiah was killed by Pharaoh Necho, 2 Kings xxiii. 29; and also near to that of the battle in which Sisera was overthrown by Barak, Judges v. 19. And some expositors have supposed this precise place Megiddo to be intended by the Armageddon of the prophecy; or, if not so, a reference meant to one or other of the battles fought near it. But there does not seem to me reason for these opinions. For the name must, I conceive, be considered mystical, so as all the other appellatives mentioned in the Apocalypse,-Sodom, Egypt, Babylon, Abaddon: and as to the battles, that of Barak and Sisera was scarcely of sufficient importance to be singled out as a precedent; and that of Josiah and Pharaoh Necho was of an issue and character the direct reverse to that of Armageddon. 1 Viz. on occasion of noticing the battle itself, at the conclusion of my next Chapter on Daniel xi, xii.-Vitringa and others identify the conflict of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, mentioned by Joel, with that of Armageddon. I purpose to notice this point there also. darkening, and vitiation of its political atmosphere: the permitted effect perhaps, in God's righteous judgment, of the working to a crisis of those evil principles.-I explain the air in the vision to mean the European political atmosphere, after the analogy of its firmament; which has been construed on undoubted evidence, I think, as the political firmament. And I speak of the effect of the disturbance caused in this atmosphere by the Vial's outpouring as of that three-fold character; because as the natural atmosphere, which constitutes the symbol, is alike the region of storms, the medium through which the heavenly luminaries shine on us, and the element we breathe, a great disturbance wrought therein may be expected to affect it in respect of each of these functions,-somewhat as in that remarkable case alluded to by Cowper:1 which being so in the symbol, it seems but reasonable to suppose the same in the thing symbolized :—besides that in the only other instance in the Apocalypse wherein the air is spoken of as affected,—viz. on occasion of the issuing from the pit of the abyss of the smoke and miasma of Mahometanism, "whereby the sun and the air were darkened,"2- we know from history that there resulted an agitation and tainting of the moral and political atmosphere of Greek Christendom, through the spread of that false religion, as well as an obscuration of the lights, or ruling authorities, in its political heaven.-Such I conceive to be the chief thing intended; though it seems far from improbable that some ominous derangement of the natural atmosphere may furnish a literal accomplishment also nearly cotemporary.3 And doubtless under the judgment of the seventh Vial we must expect this convulsion, vitiation, and darkening of the political atmosphere of Western Europe to 1 And Nature seems with dim and sickly eye To wait the close of all. I have quoted this already in my Vol. iii. p. 295; and have stated in a Note that it alludes to a very remarkable fog, which covered both Europe and Asia the whole summer of 1783; and which in one northern country of Europe prevented the sun being seen for three years. Apoc. ix. 2. See Vol. i. p. 416. 2 3 See Vol. iii. pp. 296-298-Probably the cholera of 1831 was not unconnected with some electrical derangement of the natural atmosphere. be unprecedentedly awful: the very elements of thought, and feeling, and social affection, and moral principle, whereby society and its various polities are in God's wonderful wisdom constituted and preserved, being so affected as altogether to intercept the influences of the ruling lights or authorities in our system,-to minister disease instead of health to the body politic,-and perhaps, with terrible convulsions, to resolve society for a while into its primary elements.' Thus much as to the Vial on the air; the only new symbol in the figurations before us. With regard to the thunders, lightnings, and voices of the vision, they indicate of course wars and tumults following, so as always elsewhere in the Apocalyptic prophecy: and the notice of the tremendous hailstorm accompanying greatly serves to aggravate the idea: with perhaps this further indication that France, the most northerly of the Papal kingdoms, may again enact the part of the chief instru As the symbol of the air is a new one in the Apocalyptic visions, it may be satisfactory to the reader to have the explanations of it given by two other commentators,--one of an earlier age, one a cotemporary,-who have paid most attention to the figure; viz. Vitringa and Mr. Cuninghame. Vitringa, after noting that the word air is here to be taken in its largest signification, goes on thus to describe the effects (as he supposed them) of the Vial's outpouring on it. "Ad Phialam hanc effusam tenebræ obductæ sunt cœlo mystico illius terræ cujus imperium sibi vindicaverat Bestia. Rectores utriusque ordinis, qui in hoc cœlo fulserant, de sedibus suis visi sunt deturbari :—omnia autem in regimine politico et ecclesiastico illius magni Imperii eum in modum conturbari, ut aer deesset populo illius civitatis quem biberet, et à quo refocillaretur; (sunt enim Principes et Rectores populorum, quatenus populos sibi subjectos fovent, et in illos curà et institutione suâ influunt, [Qu. inflant ?] veluti spiritus oris populi, ut vocantur apud Jeremiam, Lam. v. 20;)-et aer ille conturbatus locum faceret, et occasionem Deo præberet, gravissimis illis judiciis quæ Imperio Bestiæ ad totalem statûs ejus subversionem decreverat." p. 988. Mr. Cuninghame. "It is through the medium of the natural air, or atmosphere, that the natural sun, moon, and stars communicate to us their light, heat, and influences: it is the same air which is in us the principle of vitality. Now, through what air or atmosphere do the symbolic sun, moon, and stars, communicate to us their influences, light, and heat? I answer through the medium of the political and ecclesiastical constitutions of the states. These constitutions are also the principle of vitality to the body politic." And thence he argues that the outpouring of the seventh Vial is to be upon the political and ecclesiastical constitution of the Roman Empire; causing a tremendous agitation throughout the government, destroying a general balance of power, and superinducing the horrors of a political storm. pp. 305, 306.-There is no very great difference, it will be seen, in our explanations. 2 See Vol. iii. pp. 288, 290.-Vitringa explains the hail storm simply to indicate a judgment immediately from heaven. He compares the hail which fell in the seventh Egyptian plague, and that which fell on the Canaanites after Joshua's mental operator of the plague; very much as in the earlier judgments of the seventh Trumpet.-For the result a most remarkable revolution is foreshown as destined to befal the European Commonwealth; viz. the final breaking up of that decemregal form of the Papal empire, which has now characterized it for near thirteen centuries, into a new and tripartite form; the tripartition meant being probably, like the earlier separation of the tenth of the city, conjointly religious and political.1 In which form the Great City, or ROME,-including, I presume, both its subject Ecclesiastical State and the third of the tripartition connected with it,-is to receive its own peculiar final and appalling fate as it is said, "And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath."-So that whensoever, after fearful wars and convulsions, a tripartition like this shall take place in the European commonwealth, it must be regarded as the proximate sign, and very alarum bell to Christendom, of the judgment, the great judgment, being then at length close at hand. Of which fate the description is given in the two, or rather the three 2 next chapters. victory at Gibeon, Joshua x. 11-the latter especially without doubt a very notable case for comparison :-also Isa. xxx. 30: "The Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard; and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, and with scattering, and tempest, and hail-stones."-He might have added the case of Barak's victory near Megiddo, where "the stars in their courses" fought against Sisera : for Josephus (as Horsley observes on the song of Deborah) explains this of a hail-storm directed against him. It seems very possible that there may be here too that which shall literally answer to the prediction. See the Note Vol. iii. pp. 294, 295. But the analogy of all the Apocalyptic prefigurations requires primarily a symbolic explanation: and the precedent of the first Trumpet seems to indicate, if its analogy be followed, a judgment from the North; though not from the four winds, or of foreign origin. 1 Vitringa supposes one third to be adherents to the Papacy or Beast; another, favourers of superstition, but not the Papacy; and the last, on the side of the true Protestant Church : totam illam civitatem scindendam esse in partes sive factiones tres; quarum una superstitioni et idololatriæ Romanensi adhuc adhærebit; altera auctoritati Pontificia renunciare parata sit, sed superstitionem tamen veterem non facile deseret ; tertia in partes transibit ecclesiæ." p. 991. " Mr. Cuninghame's ultimate exposition is, that the division will have a relation to the work of the three unclean spirits before mentioned; one division ranging under the standard of Atheism and Anarchy, another under that of Despotism, another under that of Popery: agreeably with his view of the three spirits. 2 For chap. xix. describes the destruction of the Beast and False Prophet; the characteristic associates of the mystic Babylon, 2. The vision of the first of these chapters1 (ch. xvii.) is one introductory to the judgment on Babylon, and 1 I subjoin the chapter. "1. And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore, that sitteth upon the many waters : * 2. with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication: and the inhabiters of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. 3. So he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness :† and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls; having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. 5. And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. 6. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. 7. And the Angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. 8. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition; and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, (whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world,) when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.§ 9. And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. 10. And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. 11. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition. 12. And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings at one and the same time with the beast. 13. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast. 14. These shall make war with the Lamb: and the Lamb shall overcome them, (for he is Lord of lords and King of kings,) and they that are with him, the called, and chosen, and faithful.¶ 15. And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. 16. And the ten horns which thou sawest upon ** the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. 17. For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. 18. And the woman which thou sawest, is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth." επι των υδατων των πολλων. + εις ερημον. * ακαθάρτητος. Scholz, Griesbach, and Tregelles read ra икаÐаρтηта. § So our translators, according to the reading Kaimeρ €51. Griesbach, Scholz, and Tregelles read kai mapesai, and shall come. || μιαν ώραν λαμβανουσι μετα του θηριου The translation given is doubtless the true one; not, as our version, one hour." See Vol. iii. p. 68, Note . So Vitringa; understanding vincent, or viknσovo, after the KANTOL This is also, I conceive, beyond a doubt the true rendering; not that of our version, which, understanding 1, translates, "They that are with him are the called," &c. So our version, reading ETL. Griesbach, Scholz, and Tregelles have the various reading ka: as if the Beast itself would at last turn with the ten kings against the woman. But I think the reading unlikely. In case, however, of its being preferred, what is there said of the Beast's hating the Whore ; i. e. Babylon, or Rome, must be understood, I conceive, of the city Rome, not of the Romish |