11.  And blasphemed the God of heaven, because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

Vs. 10, 11.—­“The seat of the beast” is the object of the fifth vial.  The “beast” is all along from chapter xi. 7, the Roman empire.  The “image of the beast,” we have found to be the papacy, (ch. xiii. 14, 15.) Now the “seat (throne) of the beast,” would seem to point to the metropolis, where the Pope, as a kind of imperial, politico-ecclesiastical head, keeps his court, and whence decrees are issued.  This plague is like the ninth inflicted upon Egypt, (Exod. x. 21.) It was the last but one, and left Pharaoh still impenitent.  Just so here; although this vial is the last but one to be poured out on the western limb of the great antichristian conspiracy:  the population of the spiritual empire repress their complaints before men,—­“they gnawed their tongues for pain;” while they in their hearts “curse their king and their God, and look upward.” (Is. viii. 21.) This may be understood to be the actual condition of the Pope and his retainers at the present time, and especially since the year 1848, when he was forced to flee from Rome. Darkness is the emblem of distress, of mental despair, (Ps. xxxv. 8; Is. viii. 22;) and the actual relation of European powers to the see of Rome,—­Austria, France, Spain, and the Italian states, is not calculated to mitigate, but rather to augment and irritate the “pains and the sores” inflicted by this and former vials.

We can, however, offer only conjectures here, and dare not be too confident; for learned and pious expositors are of the opinion that all the vials are comprehended under the seventh trumpet; that the seventh trumpet has not yet begun to sound; and consequently, that the vials are all future.  On the other hand, equally learned and godly interpreters of these Apocalyptic hieroglyphics, are very confident that the sixth vial is in process of pouring out in our present time; and that in fact its effects are obviously traceable in providence.  Already we have indicated our humble opinion, that all the vials are not necessarily comprehended under the seventh trumpet; inasmuch as the opening of the last seal disclosed equally trumpets and vials:  yet doubtless it is requisite that the series of the trumpets should precede that of the vials, while nothing hinders that of both series should cotemporate.  We may conceive that as the first four trumpets demolished the western member of the Roman empire, and the next two the eastern limb, so the vials may be distributed in a manner somewhat similar.  The second woe, or sixth trumpet, has not yet finished its appropriate work in the final subversion of the Turkish empire, which still exists; and during the time of its last echoes, the vials may be supposed to be accomplishing their appropriate work upon the western empire, as being “wholly given to idolatry.”  While the first five vials are consuming the Antichrist in the west, the sixth is operating in the east.