A Key To The Apocalypse

The sea, in the antichristian world, is the compass of the pontifical communion; by which not only individual Christians, but whole nations, peoples, kingdoms, provinces, dioceses, otherwise disjoined and separated from each other, are collected into one. Or, the antichristian sea is the circumference of the pontifical jurisdiction or dominion, enclosing and enfolding Christian nations, as the sea does the earth.

The second phial being poured out on this sea, it becomes thereupon "as the blood of a corpse," or cold and coagulated blood, as that of dead and slain persons, or of a member cut off, when the connexion with the fountain of life being dissolved, it is deprived of the influx of spirit and warmth. The sense is, the pontifical sea was made a sacrifice of by death, dismemberment, and butchery.

Now this was fulfilled, when by the labour of Luther, and other illustrious reformers of that acre while God in a wonderful manner favoured their undertakings, no longer some individuals only of the Christian community, but whole provinces, dioceses, kingdoms, nations, and cities, renounced communion with the beast; and having made a great mutilation of his ancient most extensive empire, forcibly wrested from the body of the beast, withdrew from it. By which event, the sea of the pontifical dominion became in great measure dead, and like the blood of a dead man, in which the pontifical animals could no longer breathe and live.