Wesley Corpus

More horrid and deform [Paradise Lost, ii. 705-6: ‘So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold More dreadful and deform.’]; so they inspire us with a livelier approbation of virtue, which never appears more awful and glorious than when it appears, like the great Author of it, ' with clouds and darkness round about it.' Then it is, when I am tired with the melancholy prospect of them whose eyes the god of this world hath blinded, whose hearts he hath so bowed down to earth that their admiration soars not so high as The riches of heaven's pavement, [Mammon in Paradise Lost, i. 682.] that I fly to those whose eyes are opened, whose hearts are enlarged, who see and love the noblest objects; that I can hardly forbear crying out aloud, 'How unlike are these to Selima, Aspasia, Varanese!'; that I most earnestly repeat that my frequent wish-- O might there be unfeigned Union of mind, as in us all one soul! [Paradise Lost, viii. 6o3-4: ‘Which declare unfeigned Union of mind, or in us both one soul.’] Were it possible that my mind should unite with yours, dear Aspasia, in the single instance of humility which I can't but particularly observe and admire whenever I consider your behavior toward me, I should then dare to hope that He who had wrought in me' to think as I ought to think' would in His own time work a farther resemblance to good Aspasia in Her most obliged, faithful CYRUS. The esteem of Araspes as well as Cyrus must ever attend both Aspasia and Selima. To Mrs. Pendarves [3] April 14 [1731].