2. They were poured out upon those "which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshiped his image." It has already been shown that the image made by the second beast of chapter 13 was the Protestant ecclesiastical organizations; hence the "beast" here referred to, to which the image was made, must signify the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Rome, the original. So the plagues fell upon the adherents of both organized Romanism and Protestantism in Europe. 3. The reason why the judgments of the first three vials especially descended upon them was because "they had shed the blood of saints and prophets." Verse 6. That Romanism was a fierce oppressor of God's people has already been noticed: Protestantism as their persecutor, also, must now be considered further. Protestant sects after they first became established and got power in their own hands, acted much in the same manner as the church of Rome did before them, persecuting, banishing, imprisoning, and even putting to death those who refused to receive their tenets or to conform to the system of religion they had adopted. The Lutherans, at first a pious, persecuted people, on becoming numerous and exalted by the favor of the great, established a certain system of religion and then, when it was in their power, persecuted, imprisoned, banished, or put to death all that dissented. As early after the Reformation as 1574, in a convention at Torgaw, they established the real presence in the eucharist and instigated the Elector of Saxony to seize, imprison, and banish all the secret Calvinists that differed from them in sentiment, and to reduce their followers by every act of violence, to renounce their sentiments and to confess the ubiquity. Peucer, for his opinions, suffered ten years of imprisonment in the severest manner. In 1577 a form of concord was produced in which the real manducation of Christ's body and blood in the eucharist was established and heresy and excommunication laid on all that refused this as an article of faith, with pains and penalties to be enforced by the secular arm. Crellius, in 1601, was put to death. In Switzerland, before the city of Zurich was entirely safe itself from the encroachments of Romanism, its Protestant council condemned a young man named Felix Mantz to be drowned because he insisted that the baby-sprinkling of Romanism was not baptism and that all who had received the rite ought to be immersed. This sentence was carried into effect. The severest laws were passed in different countries of Europe against the Anabaptists, and large numbers were banished or burnt at the stake. See Encyclopædia Britannica, Art. Anabaptists. Protestants may claim this was because of their fanaticism on other lines; but it remains a fact, nevertheless, that the chief sentiment at the base of these laws was religious persecution and that Protestants sanctioned and carried them into execution.