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the contaminated mind corrupts sensibility, and adorns by the name of state policy the most horrible outrages"

Whatever may be the variety or discordance of political opinions respecting the French Revolution, there cannot be a question or a doubt that it began to take the dominion with irresistible violence out of the hands of the papacy, and that it fell as a noisome and grievous sore npon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image. The authority of the pope was judicially disannulled; the church-lands were sold; the images were destroyed; "the churches were plundered of their gold and silver; even their bells were melted and cast into cannon;"† thousands of nobility and clergy were compelled to forsake their country, a thing new to Europe, and take refuge among aliens; and in a land where the saints of the Most High had been exterminated or expelled, it was death to administer the means of concealment or existence to the recusant and exiled priests; and while the men were marked on whom it fell, never was any fact on earth more clear, than that the French Revolution was to them a noisome and

grievous sore. It maintained in all its progress the same unvaried character, till other vials of wrath were poured forth in other forms.

**Lavalette's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 177, 178
Brewster's Encyclop. vol. ix. p. 635.

CHAPTER XXV.

SECOND VIAL.

THERE is an obvious analogy between the second trumpet and the second vial; the sea, though, in regard to the former, in a more limited degree or restricted sense, being alike the scene of both. And in comparing things spiritual with spiritual, or one portion of scripture with another, in which the same words have the same signification, and looking to history in its order, the judgments of God may be seen as manifestly in the fulfilment of the second vial as of the second trumpet, the historical exposition of which was left exclusively to Gibbon.

Of the second trumpet it is said, “ And the second angel sounded, and, as IT WERE, a great mountain, burning with fire, was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed." Under the second vial no symbol or similitude of the form in which the wrath was to come are given, but the scene and similar effect of it are told.

And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man; and every living soul died in the sea. In a more enlarged sense, we have to look once again, as.in the days of Genseric, but after the lapse of nearly fourteen hundred years, to the sea, to witness the similar but still deadlier effect of the latter vision.

No prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation; the event finally unfolds it. At the end it will speak and not lie. And if the time be indeed past, and the judgment be manifest, the proof of it may be obvious, and the most patent of all authorities may be appealed to in illustration. We have seen, from Gibbon, how the different events predicted in the Revelation of Jesus Christ followed in their due order and course, and were often intimately connected. And now, come down to modern times, we need but to open an almanac,* to see the close succession and connexion between the first and second vial, copying the words in their exact order.

1792 France became a republic.

1793 King of France guillotined, January 21.

Queen of France guillotined, October 1.

1794 French fleet defeated by Earl Howe, June 1. 1795 Again by Lord Bridport.

1797 Spanish fleet defeated by Earl St. Vincent, Feb. 14. Dutch fleet defeated by Lord Duncan, October 11. 1798 French fleet defeated by Lord Nelson, August 1.

In February 1793, war was declared by France against Great Britain. The British sought in vain

* Chronology of remarkable occurrences, in the Edinburgh Almanac, for any year of the present century.

Truth may sometimes be easily found in a common footpath, while it may be painfully searched for in vain in the most intricate mazes. It is here, we think, patent to the world. And it is but to show a token of its simplicity, to state that the inspection of the almanac, as above, first confirmed, if it did not suggest, the interpretation here given of the second vial. History, in these reforming days, has been called an old almanac. Though it were nothing more, it has still its facts and its dates; and these are enough for the elucidation of prophecy. And though it abounds with beacons rather than finger-posts, there are still marks and mile-stones to which the Christian can point in triumph, and claim as his own, as they show that, whether on the sea or the land, no conqueror ever strayed from the path which the scriptures predicted as the way he would take, or the work he would do.

to combat with the French on the continent; and an army, headed by the duke of York, speedily retreated before the republican troops, and left its artillery in their hands. It was on the sea that the vial was to be poured; on her own element Britain was triumphant, and there her thunder was poured with tremendous and irresistible efficacy. The preceding evidence, so manifest as to be supplied by any almanac, though it shows the succession of the first and second vials, is not complete; and the words of the prophecy require a minute specification of facts, to show how, as denoting the wrath of God, the sea became as the blood of a dead man; and how it might be said of that season as of no other, every living thing died in the sea.

The effect of the pouring out of the vial may be seen from the record not only of great naval victories, but of the incessant and continued destruction of which, from the time it began to be poured out, the sea was everywhere the scene.

A List of Ships of the line, Frigates, &c. late belonging to the French Navy, captured, destroyed, wrecked, foundered, or accidentally burnt, during the year 1793.*

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How, when, and where lost.

Captured with the Commercede-Marseille.

Captured, October 11, by the Captain, 74, near Genoa. Captured, June 18, by the British Frigate Nymph, off the Start.

Captured, October 20, by the British Frigate Crescent, off Cape Barfleur.

Captured, October 20, by the the Beford and Captain, 74's, at Genoa.

Captured along with Commerce-de-Marseille. Alceste was delivered up to the Sardinians.

Captured, October 20, by the British Frigates Penelope and Iphigenia, off St. Domingo. Destroyed, May 21, by the Spanish fleet under Admiral Borga at St. Bietro.

Destroyed along with Triomphant, &c.

Captured, November 27, by the British Frigates Latona and Phaeton, off Ushant.

Captured along with Commerce-de-Marseille.

Of smaller French ships, the following were lost, taken, or destroyed in 1793: Ariel, 20 guns; Gordan, 14; Prompte, 20; Curieux, 14; Vanneau, 6; L'Ectair, 22; Lutín, 12; Convention Nationale, 10; L'Espiegle, 16; Auguste, 24; Mulette, 18; Poulette, 26; Sincere, 18; Meselle, 20; Tarleston, 14. One British ship of the line was burnt, and nine under the line were captured, destroyed, or wrecked, during the same year.

A new era was thus commenced in naval warfare; and the second vial began to be poured upon the sea. Referring the reader, who may be desirous of fuller illustration, to James' Naval History of Great Brit

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