Date: 1754

"What is the juxta-position of ideas? what is that chain which connects, by intermediate ideas that are the links of it, ideas that are remote, but figurative stile?"

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1755

"When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"If I am accidentally left alone for a few hours, said he, my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence, but they are soon disentangled by the prince's conversation, and instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: December 29, 1759

"But as we advance forward into the crowds of life, innumerable delights sollicit our inclinations, and innumerable cares distract our attention; the time of youth is passed in noisy frolicks; manhood is led on from hope to hope, and from project to project; the dissoluteness of pleasure, the ine...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1762, 1868

"Hasten, Lord, the day of rest / From this indwelling sin, / Vindicate Thy church oppress'd, / And still enslaved within; / Burst our bonds, and let us go / From every thought of evil freed, / Pure in heart, and saints below, / And like our sinless Head."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: September, 1766

"Deliver me, gracious Lord from the bondage of doubt and from all evil customs, and take not from me thy Holy Spirit, but enable me so to spend my remaining days, that by performing thy will I may promote thy glory, and grant that after the troubles and disappointments of this mortal state I may ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779-1780, 1781

"The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness. He languished some years under that depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: August 1783

"Death broke at once the vital chain, / And free'd his soul the nearest way."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1785

"In fetters confined Our body complains, / Oppress'd is our mind , With heavier chains."

— Wesley, Charles (1707-1788)

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)