Like a vast spider suspended by a metal chord, a candelabrum presided over the room nine feet above the floor-boards. From its sweeping arms of iron, long stalactites of wax lowered their pale spilths drip by drip, drip by drip.

a clenched fist

This doubtless that that they ought to bee many and overcostly, no true Protestant will affirme.

...I would identify a more recent and widespread tendency to remove evil from the realm of a properly human interpretation: what I call a postmodern teratology of the sublime.