Date: 1689

And yet there is, there is one prize / Lock'd in an adamantine Breast; / Storm that then, Love, if thou be'st wise, / A Conquest above all the rest, / Her Heart, who binds all Hearts in chains, / Castanna's Heart untouch'd remains."

— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)

Date: 1691

"Grace doth our Souls to God unite, / Like glorious Golden Chains."

— Keach, Benjamin (1640-1704)

Date: 1730

"Thou golden chain 'twixt God and men, / Bless'd Reason! guide my life and pen."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1737

"Brave Souls when loos'd from this ignoble Chain / Of Clay, and sent to their own Heav'n again, / From Earth's gross Orb on Virtue's Pinions rise / In Æther wanton, and enjoy the Skies."

— Baker, Henry (1698-1774)

Date: 1739

"To usher forth the Virtues of the Mind! / From Nature's Chain, from Earthly Dross set free, / One only Appetite remained in Thee."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: February 3, 1788

"The spirit of the Gospel 'proclaims liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound:' but these men rivet the chains of slavery; 'the iron enters into the Negro's soul,' while while his mind is left in all the darkness of ignorance, without one ray of those comforts ...

— Agutter, William (1758-835)

Date: 1789, 1794

"In every cry of every Man / In every Infants cry of fear / In every voice; in every ban / The mind-forg'd manacles I hear."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1803

"The polish'd links that form the social chain, / For ages still to ages may remain / Nor snapt by rage, nor undermin'd by art, / If well the rivets join in every part; / But if those links that would the peasant bind, / Gall his chaf'd body, and corrode his mind, / The poor man's iron, and the r...

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)