Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Spiritual laws by carnal power shall force / On every conscience; laws which none shall find / Left them inrolled, or what the Spirit within / Shall on the heart engrave."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"But know that in the soul / Are many lesser faculties, that serve / Reason as chief; among these Fancy next / Her office holds; of all external things / Which the five watchful senses represent, / She forms imaginations, aery shapes, / Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames / All what...

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1671

"He who reigns within himself and rules his passions, desires, and fears is more than a king is"

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1745

"'I am too noble, and of too high a birth,' saith that excellent moralist, 'to be a slave to my body; which I look upon only as a chain thrown upon the liberty of my soul.'"

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1745

"They are plainly and explicitly published; easily understood; and in fair and legible characters writ in every man's heart; and the wisdom, reason, and necessity of them are readily discerned."

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1745

"But what is most dishonourable of all is, for a man at once to discover a great genius and an ungoverned mind. Because that strength of reason and understanding he is master of gives him a great advantage for the government of his passions."

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1745

"And therefore his suffering himself notwithstanding to be governed by them, shows that he hath too much neglected or misapplied his natural talent, and willingly submitted to the tyranny of those lusts and passions, over which nature had furnished him with abilities to have secured an easy conqu...

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1745

"As in the humours of the body, so in the vices of the mind, there is one predominant which has an ascendant over us, and leads and governs us."

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"That mind is said to be possessed of NATURAL LIBERTY, or liberty of choice, which is so constituted, as that its volitions shall not be invincibly determined by any foreign cause or consideration whatever offered to it, but by its own sovereign pleasure."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"PHILOSOPHICAL LIBERTY consists in a prevailing disposition to act according to the dictates of reason; i. e. in such a manner, as shall, all things considered, most effectually promote our happiness. A disposition to act contrary to this is MENTAL SERVITUDE: and when the mind is equally...

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)