“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” — Verses 8,11.
The intense sufferings of the Beast’s Image-worshippers 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. “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 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°F, 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 standpoint, greatly to be deplored. But, when it is remembered, that they were worshippers 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” — egeneto he basileia autou eskotomene. 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. 2:8). 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, incensed in the ratio of the severity of the plagues, against Greeks, Latins, and Protestants, represented in the Holy Alliance, by Russia, Austria, and Prussia; 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 re-establishing 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 reentering Rome, he characterized himself and his office by the papal title of “the Vicar of the Deity upon earth”. The acts following this re-assertion 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 worshippers 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” — hou metanoesan, 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 to incline them to better things; and when they come to be executed by the saints, the world will learn righteousness (Isa. 26:9): 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, tram-
At Waterloo the Prussians did not arrive until Napoleon at the head of the French and Wellington in charge of the British had been engaged for more than five hours. Their appearance, however, settled Napoleon’s doom, for, as fresh troops, they were able to continue an unrelenting pursuit when Wellington’s forces were too exhausted to advance further. The famous meeting of the Allied commanders occurred near the farm of La Belle Alliance on the road to Charleroi, whither the French hosts fled in utter disorder. This sealed Napoleon’s fate. He was banished to the island of St. Helene, where he died — Publishers.