y were established in great numbers through
Germany, Sweden, Prussia, Poland, Austria, Holland, France, Switzerland,
Italy, England, Scotland, and America. They spread with a rapidity which
nothing but fact could have induced any sober mind to believe."

This system of infidelity is well symbolized by a noisome, grevious
ulcer, which is loathsome to the sight, offensive to the smell,
corrupting to the body, and productive of awful pain. That it appeared
so to others besides the author of the Revelation is shown by the
following epithets which Burke, the celebrated English orator, applied
to the spirit of the French Revolution, which was only the discharged
virus of these ulcers. He styled it "the fever of Jacobinism;" "the
epidemic of atheistical fanaticism;" "an evil lying deep in the
corruptions of human nature;" "such a plague, that the precaution of the
most severe quarantine ought to be established against it." The result,
he says, was "the corruption of all morals," "the decomposition of all
society." What greater plague could fall upon Romanism and Protestantism
than this fearful scourge of infidelity?

I have dwelt for a considerable length of time upon this subject,
because of its deep interest, and also because I desired to verify the
application of the symbol as much as possible, on account of its close
connection with the pouring out of the vials which follow.

3. 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.

This vial was poured out upon the "sea." The sea is a large body of
water within the earth, subject to violent storms and agitations. As a
symbol it would denote some central power or kingdom within the symbolic
earth in a state of revolution. The effects produced by this vial were
two-fold--the waters were changed into blood as of a dead man, and all
the living creatures in the sea died. The waters of the sea represent
the inhabitants of this kingdom (see a similar explanation of _water_ in
chap. 17:15) as the earth does the inhabitants of the empire, or the ten
kingdoms. The living creatures in the sea, therefore, could signify the
rulers and princes of the kingdom, as they bear an analagous relation to
the people that fishes do to the waters. The statement that the waters
of the sea became "as the blood of a dead man" is doubtless intended to
signify a much more dreadful state of things than if t