xx. VIALS.
That we may understand what those rivers are upon which the third vial was poured out [Revelation 16:4–7], we must consider what are those rivers by which the city of Babylon is watered, what are the fountains of waters at which they drink.
Without doubt, they are those societies that are fountains of Popery, fountains of popish doctrines and doctors, fountains of teachers of Antichristianism; that continually send forth streams into every part to water the antichristian world, that water the stately cedars of their Lebanon, their trees that bring forth the grapes of Sodom and apples of Gomorrah; those fountains at which the Papists do continually drink.
The water is the doctrine; the streams, or waterers, are the teachers. The teachers of true Christianity were said to water Christians (Paul planted and Apollos watered); so the teachers of Popery are the streams that water the popish world.
And what are the rivers and fountains from whence these proceed but the societies from whence they issue forth, the universities, societies of Jesuits, and others?
These are the rivers and fountains that continually keep the trees from withering and drying up, and the men from dying with thirst. Wherefore, I take the rivers here to be meant all such societies as are fountains of Popery, whether of one kind or another.
The kingdom of France has been the grand fountain of Popery.
This has been the great river that has watered the antichristian world; this has been their market place, their great university, the seat and fountain of their learning and policy.
Wherefore, the pouring out of the third vial may be the reformation of that kingdom and [its] casting off of Popery; then they shall no more drink at this river as they have done. At the same time shall also the other societies and universities be turned to blood; not that all the popish universities shall be reformed, but that all the most learned men everywhere shall begin to loath and scorn Popery when the learned nation of [France] rejects it.
Thus, at the same time that France, the Nile of that city that is spiritually called Egypt, shall become loathsome to them as blood, so also [shall] the lesser streams, brooks and pools of water; so that they shall have nothing but blood to drink, "for they are worthy."
If France was but reformed, and the most learned men in other parts, the rest of Antichristendom will be but a miserable, dry, parched, withered, barren wilderness whose pleasant rivers are dried up.
Some of those societies shall be reformed and others destroyed, as perhaps the societies of Jesuits. Whether this vial is not begun to be poured out already upon France in the dreadful judgments that have lately fallen upon that kingdom, I will not dispute.
[JE may have been referring to the losses France sustained in the War of the Spanish Succession, when by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 she was forced to cede to England considerable territory in America. But it is possible that he was thinking of the national humiliation, rioting, and widespread economic distress resulting from the collapse or the grandiose Mississippi Company in 1720; he would also have been aware that from 1720 to 1722 several provinces of southern France were devastated by a plague of incredible violence, which took about 100,000 lives.]
There han't been yet but two remarkable steps of the Reformation. The first was in Wicliff's, Hus's, and Jerome of Prague's days, and after, which was a vexing and grievous sore to them; which undoubtedly is too great to be left entirely out of prophecy and is, I am sure, great enough to answer the first vial.
The second [was] the Reformation at and after Luther's days, when the sea was turned to blood; since which time all things have been at a stand, or at least have made slow progress.
Nothing has happened since, that is any near great enough to answer the pouring out of one of the seven vials, especially the third; which is undoubtedly one of the greatest, or else there would not be such particular notice taken of it. I.e. by the comparatively large amount of space allotted to it in Revelation 16.
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