Revelation 16:8,9

THE FOURTH VIAL.

"And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire."

"And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues; and they repented not to give him glory."

We have now reached the fourth vial of the wrath of God. It will be another of. series of calamities that befall the Papal power. We may expect it to follow closely those already described.

The symbol employed to represent the fourth calamity is the sun.. have stated elsewhere in these Chapter s that the sun is symbolical of. ruler or king, Any one who becomes. great light and occupies. pre-eminent position, may be indicated by this symbol. The Savior is described as the Sun of Righteousness. In the dream of Joseph, his father Jacob, the patriarchal ruler, is represented by the sun. Among orientals it is the well known symbol of. king or ruler. The fourth vial is poured upon this sun, and power is given it to scorch men with fire. Fire, the instrument of bitter pain, is. symbol of suffering. It is therefore evident that the ruler, symbolized by the sun, shall be the means of inflicting great suffering upon men. As we have found that these calamities are directed against the Papacy, it would follow that the sufferers are those who have received the mark of the beast. Though these adherents of Rome are in great anguish from the calamities that befall them, still they do not repent of their crimes. Like ancient Egypt under the plagues, Rome will still persist in her wicked deeds, still refuses to liberate the people from her spiritual slavery.

We have now ascertained about what the symbolism must mean. Let us next inquire whether history confirms the interpretation by events which correspond to the prophecy.

In 1801. scorching sun had arisen in the political horizon of the old world. The victor or Lodi and Marengo, the conqueror of Italy, had become the ruler or the French nation. At first he ruled under the old Roman title of Consul.. few years later he was crowned as Emperor of the French. No such scorching sun had arisen in the political horizon for more than. thousand years, and. do not know that the world has ever seen so great. scourge of man. From 1796 to 1815 he was engaged in war without. moment's cessation. He converted Europe into. great camp, and every nation was blackened and torn with wars. From Spain to Moscow, from Egypt to Holland, the march of his armies left behind. track or blood. In his wars it is estimated that 2,000,000 men perished by the sword, and none can tell of the want and misery and despair that brooded over the bleeding and desolated lands that were tracked by his armies. There was hardly. home in Europe that did not suffer; hardly one that was not in mourning for slain fathers, brothers and sons, or for wives and daughters who had met. fate worse than death.

This scorching sun, which parched, burnt and blackened the earth, exerted. most baleful influence on the power of the Papacy. In 1796 Bonaparte entered Italy; in 1797 his armies entered the Papal dominions, and. peace was made by which the Pope was not only shorn of half his provinces, but was compelled to buy off the invader by the payment of large sums of money. The next year the French armies entered Rome, tore the Pope from the Vatican, sent him. prisoner to France to die, and robbed Rome Of its hoarded wealth. It was despoiled of its treasures of art, which were sent to Paris as legitimate spoils of war. The historian Allison speaks as follows of this spoliation in his history of Europe. Vol. 1, page 546:

"But long before the Pope had sunk under the persecution of his oppressors, Rome had experienced the bitter fruits of Republican fraternization. Immediately after the entry of the French troops commenced the regular and systematic pillage of the city. Not only the churches and the convents but the palaces of the cardinals and of the nobility were laid waste. The agents of the Directory, insatiable in the pursuit of plunder, and merciless in the means of exacting it, ransacked every quarter within its walls, seized the most valuable works of art, and stripped the Eternal City of those treasures which had survived the Gothic fire and the rapacious hands of the Spanish soldiers. The bloodshed was much less, but the spoil collected incomparably greater than at the disastrous sack which followed the death of the Constable Bourbon. Almost all the great works of art which have since that time been collected throughout Europe, were then scattered abroad. The spoliation exceeded all that the Goths or Vandals had effected. Not only the palaces of the Vatican, and the Monte Cavallo, and the chief nobility of Rome, but those of Castel Gandolfo, on the margin of the Alban lake, of Terracina, the Villa Albani, and others in the environs of Rome, were plundered of every article of value which they possessed. The whole sacerdotal habits of the Pope and cardinals were burned, in order to collect from the flames the gold with which they were adorned. The Vatican was stripped to its naked walls; the immortal frescoes of Raphael and Michael Angelo remained in solitary beauty amid the general desolation.. contribution of four millions in money, two millions in provisions, and three thousand horses, was imposed on. city already exhausted by the enormous exactions it had previously undergone. Under the direction of the infamous commissary Hallar, the domestic library, museum, furniture, jewels, and even the private clothes of the Pope, were sold. Nor did the palaces of the Roman nobility escape devastation. The noble galleries of the Cardinal Braschi, and the Cardinal York, the last relic of the Stuart line, underwent the same fate. Others, as those of the Chigi, Borghese, and Doria palaces, were rescued from destruction only by enormous ransoms. Everything of value that the Tolentino had left in Rome became the prey of Republican cupidity, and the very name of freedom soon became odious, from the sordid and infamous crimes which were committed in its name.

"Nor were the exactions of the French confined to the plunder of palaces and churches. Eight cardinals were arrested and sent to Civita Castellana, while enormous contributions were levied on the papal territory, and brought home the bitterness of conquest to every poor man's door. At the same time, the ample territorial possessions of the church and the monasteries were confiscated, and declared national property;. measure which, by drying up at once the whole resources of the affluent, classes, precipitated into the extreme of misery the numerous poor who were maintained by their expenditure or fed by their bounty. All the respectable citizens and clergy were in fetters; and. base and despicable faction alone, among whom, to their disgrace be it told, were found fourteen cardinals, followed in the train of the oppressors; and at. public festival, returned thanks to God for the miseries they had brought upon their country."

The imprisoned Pope died in captivity. The next Pope was elected in 1799, not in Rome, which was held by French soldiers, but in Venice. In 1800 he was permitted to return to his desolated capital as the dependent of France. In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte determined to place upon his head the old imperial crown as emperor of the Romans, and the Pope was compelled to journey by land to Paris in order to gratify his master by serving in the ceremonial. Four years later Plus VII. was dragged from his palace, as his predecessor had been, and sent. prisoner into France. His States of the Church were confiscated. The grant made by Charlemagne near 1200 years before was resumed, and until the fall of Napoleon, the Pope was without temporal possessions. The imprisoned hierarch was not only shorn of his worldly estates, but was compelled to sign. compact by which he gave up the power of appointing bishops in the French empire to Napoleon. It was only when the power of Napoleon was broken that he was permitted to return to his pillaged city, to reascend. throne and to grasp. broken sceptre.

Napoleon had broken the spell of Rome. He taught the world that the power of the Popes might be successfully dared. The terror of Papal bulls, anathemas and interdicts, was then dispelled forever. Since his day the Pope has ceased to be the most powerful factor in the history of nations. But, notwithstanding these scourgings, the Papacy has not abated its exorbitant and blasphemous pretensions. They have not repented of their sins.