Phial the Seventh, in the Air.

The seventh and last phial is poured out in the air; that is, on the power of the air, or Satan, comprehending and animating in its bosom, not only the dominions of the beast, but of all the enemies of Christ our Lord, in every part of the world.

Now, as the beast drew from him spirit and life, even from his beginning, so the last fortunes 432of the bestial party will rely chiefly on their power and auspices, which may consist both in the array of so many confederates and auxiliaries, in the war of this last phial, collected together, as is related, by diabolical arts; and also from this circumstance, that the dragon, now Satan, not only intermeddles in their affairs by his vicars, the beast and false prophet, in levying this army of the habitable world, but that he by himself, in the last struggle of his reign, may appear to exercise his own proper and peculiar part; especially in calling forth those to a share in this war, upon whom otherwise the beast and false prophet could by no means have prevailed, either by authority or influence, or even perhaps by a representation of common danger.

Against so many enemies, thus gathered together under the auspices of the power of the air, and enclosed as in a cage at Armageddon, the seventh phial will be discharged, no longer by a human hand, but with a celestial and fulminating vengeance; (for “it is the battle of the great day, and of God Almighty.”) By this the ruin of the beast will be fully consummated; not of the seat only, or the city of Babylon, as before, under the fifth trumpet, but of the state itself; that is, of the Babylonian senate and people, wherever they shall be surviving after the destruction of the city, until the extermination of 433all the kings and states, who had hitherto committed fornication with idols and false deities, and of the rest of the tyrants, who opposed together the holy Church of Christ, shall be completely effected.