Wesley Corpus

quâm pingui macer est mihi taurus in agro / Idem amor eritium est pecori, pecorisque magistro. Idem amor The same love in the bull and in the man | What elegance of sentiment 1 Is it possible anything can exceed this? One would imagine nothing could, had not the same chaste poet furnished us with yet another scene, more abundantly shocking than this: Pasiphäen nivei solatur amore juvencil “He comforts Pasiphäe with the love of her milk-white bull!” Nihil supra ! * The condoling a woman on her unsuc cessful amour with a bull shows a brutality which nothing can exceed! How justly then does the Apostle add, “as they did not like,” or desire, “to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to an undiscerning mind, to do those things which are not convenient!” In consequence of this, they were “filled with all unrighteousness,” vice of every kind, and in every degree;--in particular “with fornication,” (taking the word in its largest sense, as including every sin of the kind,) “with wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, with envy, mur der, debate, deceit, malignity;”--being “haters of God,” the true God, the God of Israel, to whom they allowed no place among all their herd of deities;--“despiteful, proud, boasters,” in as eminent a degree as ever was any nation under heaven ; “inventors of evil things,” in great abundance, of mille nocendi artes,t both in peace and war;--“disobedient to parents,”-- although duty to these is supposed to be inscribed on the hearts of the most barbarous nations;--“covenant-breakers,”--even * Nothing can exceed this.-EDIT. t A thousand arts of annoyance.-EDIT. of those of the most solemn kind, those wherein the public faith was engaged by their supreme Magistrate; which, notwith standing, they made no manner of scruple of breaking, when ever they saw good; only colouring over their perfidiousness, by giving those Magistrates into their hands with whom the “covenant” was made. And what was this to the purpose? Is the King of France, or the republic of Holland, at liberty to violate their most solemn treaties at pleasure, provided they give up to the King of England the Ambassador, or General, by whom that treaty was made?