"And the fourth Angel poured out his Vial upon the sun. And power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And the men were scorched with great heat.

And they blasphemed the name of God which hath power over these plagues. And they repented not to give Him glory.”

I again resort to the parallel judgment of the fourth Trumpet, as a guide to the significancy of this of the fourth Vial. The which earlier prophecy was as follows. “And the fourth Angel sounded: and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.” And I showed its fulfilment in the circumstance of Augustulus, the Emperor of the Western third of the old Roman Empire, and thus the third of the sun in its symbolic firmament, being forced by Odoacer the Herulian to abdicate his sovereignty;—an abdication followed by the extinction of the subordinate Roman authorities. It results, as an inference, that there was predicted in the Vial before us the darkening, partially or entirely, either of that power among the ten Papal kingdoms which might be considered as most properly the sun in the symbolic firmament of Papal Christendom, that is, of the German Emperor; or perhaps of the sovereigns of those Papal kingdoms, more in the general: and this as a sequel, chronologically, to the judgments foreshown under the former Vial.

And, to see its accomplishment in the wars of the French Revolution, (not to speak of the earlier and more partial sprinkling of the Vial, when the lights of the Dutch Stadholder and King of Sardinia were in 1794 and 1796 extinguished, just after the earliest sprinkling of the third Vial on the rivers and fountains of waters of Papal Christendom,—I say, to see its full accomplishment,) we have only to proceed in due course with the history. In 1806, the year after the battle of Austerlitz, we read of the German Emperor’s solemn renunciation, on Napoleon’s necessitating it, of his title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and of Germany: very much like that by Augustulus on Odoacer’s requirement. So the Holy Roman Empire, as it was called, having lasted 1000 years from the time of Charlemagne, was declared to be no more, and the imperial sun of Papal Christendom darkened; the Emperor Francis retaining the title of Emperor simply as sovereign of his hereditary Austrian dominions. For it is to be understood that this was not a mere dropping of an empty name of supreme Majesty. By the stipulations of the Treaty of Presburg, and formation of the Confederation of the Rhine,—a Confederation chiefly constituted of the Dukes of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, under the Protectorate of France,—the old Germanic imperial constitution was revolutionized, and these princes made altogether independent of the Germanic Emperor. In effect they were at the same time made Kings, vassal Kings of the French Empire, not the German.—And so began the king-making by Napoleon; whereby, within two short years after, most of the other once independent sovereignties of Western Europe were revolutionized, and their light eclipsed in the political heaven. First, the power of Prussia (of Prussia nominally Protestant, but long since imbued with French infidelity and German neology) was utterly overthrown in the fatal battles of Auerstadt and Jena,2 and its king shorn of half his dominions;—then the Saxon Elector, aggrandized with Prussian territory, made King of Saxony by Napoleon;—then his own brother Jerome, similarly aggrandized, constituted King of Westphalia, another brother (Louis) King of Holland, another (Joseph) King of Spain and Portugal, and his general Murat, King of Naples. Never before had there been such a subversion of old dynasties, and change to new ones, in the history of modern Europe; never (to use the symbolic phraseology of Scripture prophecy) such a darkening of the sun, and shaking of the powers of heaven, in the political firmament.—All this was in the years 1806, 1807, 1808. And when in 1809 the Austrian Emperor made another desperate effort to emancipate both himself and the other European sovereignties, and effect for them emergence from eclipse into their former independence and power, the battles of Eckmuhl and of Wagram turned his hopes into despair: and (somewhat as in the case of the betrothment to the Goth Astulphus of the Roman Princess Placidia) he only purchased peace by giving his own daughter, the Archduchess Maria Louisa, in marriage to the oppressor; and with her an implied acquiescence in, and sanction to, Napoleon’s usurpations and tyranny.

It is added, “And power was given him to scorch men with fire; and the men were scorched with great heat.” It is evidently to the Angel who poured out the Vial that this power belonged. But, just as in the case of the Angel Abaddon that conducted the locust plague of the fifth Trumpet, so here too we may suppose a visible and earthly agency operating, under the invisible angelic agency, to execute the judgment of the Vial. And certainly such an agent was Napoleon.—“It was given him to scorch the men with fire.” It has been suggested, I think, by Dr. Keith, that there may be an allusion in this expression to the artillery used by the French Emperor, to an extent beyond all former example in military annals, as the great arm of his victories. Nor does he seem to me to be unwarranted in this supposition by the analogy of prophecy. If the fire noted under the sixth Trumpet, as that by which the Greek Empire was to fall, was literally the fire of artillery, why not the same here? It is related that the Mamelucs, after experience in the battle of the Pyramids of the “flaming citadels” which had dissipated their squadrons, designated Buonaparte as the Sultan Khebir or Sultan of fire.—But the fulfilment of the expression, taken in its common figurative sense of fiery affliction and suffering, is equally clear in the history of the wars of Napoleon. And which of the countries of Western Europe, from Cadiz in the South-western corner of Spain, to the far Russian frontier in the North-west, did not suffer dreadfully from them; until after the epoch of the zenith of the oppressor’s power in 1809–1811, when it began to wane; and indeed yet afterwards until its extinction? Even in regard of the French themselves, all victorious as their armies generally were till 1812, the amount of suffering that they had to undergo from the combined rigours of taxation and the conscription, and the reckless mode too of his making war,—without magazines, often without hospitals, to live by plunder, and be murdered in detail as plunderers,—has probably been seldom paralleled.—Yet more, what of the countries conquered by them; both during the actual progress of war, and under the oppressions that followed it? What, even during the wars of recovery? I subjoin, as specimens, a few extracts from testimonies fresh written from some of the later scenes of suffering.2 And certainly, after reading them, we shall be the better able to appreciate the point and truth of the observation made by Napoleon’s own secretary Bourrienne, in regard of these transactions: “When, at a distance from the theatre of glory, we see but the melancholy results which have been produced, the genius of conquest can only be regarded as the genius of destruction.”—“It was given to the 4th Vial-Angel to scorch men with fire. And they were scorched with great heat.”

It is added of the men thus scorched with great heat, that “they blasphemed the name of God, who had power over these plagues, and repented not to give Him glory.” As a second and later notice, to much the same effect, will call for illustration under the next Vial, the present may be passed over more cursorily. Suffice it therefore to say that during the fearful period hitherto specially past in review, from 1789 to 1809,—i.e. from the first outbreak of the revolutionary venom in France to the final prostration of the German Empire, and indeed of all Western continental Europe, in opposing it, no evidence appeared of these judgments having been effective for their intended purpose; no case of the suffering nations renouncing their practical infidelity, or the Papal apostasy, for a purer faith, and turning, like some at the Reformation, to the God that smote them. France, wearied with the absurdity and impolicy of its national atheism, had indeed nationally abandoned it; for the profession however, not of a true scriptural faith, but again of Popery:—and this chiefly as a principle of tranquillization and control for weaker minds,—the women, the children, the superstitious; while all the energy of the nation, especially at home in the capital, and among the soldiery abroad, continued leavened with the old infidelity. There had been no repenting in France to give God glory. The same was substantially the case in Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal; the Romish superstition being professed nationally, the French infidelity cherished in the heart: and, together therewith, instead of humiliation under God’s judgments, a bitter blaspheming rebelliousness of spirit against Him who sent them.—But on this subject I shall not now enlarge; as the notice is renewed, as I said, and will better come before us for consideration after the next Vial.


Elliott, E. B. (1862). Horæ Apocalypticæ; or, A Commentary on the Apocalypse, Critical and Historical (Fifth Edition, Vol. 3, pp. 389–395). Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.