Date: 1753

"By steel may bodies be confin'd, / But love, my Orra, chains the mind."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1758

"Fortune is an evil Chain to the Body; and Vice, to the Soul. For he whose Body is unbound, and whose Soul is chained, is a Slave. On the contrary, he whose Body is chained, and his Soul unbound, is free."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1758

"The Chain of the Body, Nature unbinds by Death; and Vice, by Money: the Chain of the Soul, Virtue unbinds, by Learning, and Experience, and philosophic Exercise."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1765

"Thy way, by grace so well begun, / I shall have farther strength to run / Until I reach the goal; / When, Jesus, from this low degree, / And bondage of mortality, / Thou hast enlarged my soul."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1765

"Lord, from this despondence rousing, / For the glory of thy name, / And my righteous cause espousing, / Bring my soul from bonds and shame."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1788-89

"The former [Platonic philosophy] fills the soul with intelligible light, breaks her lethargic fetters, and elevates her to the principle of things; the latter [Lockean philosophy] clouds the intellectual eye of the soul, by increasing her oblivion, strengthens her corporeal bands, and hurries he...

— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)

Date: 1789

"Here lies her bracelet of flowers, exquisitely perfumed by the root of síura which had been spread on her bosom: it has fallen from her delicate wrist, and is become a new chain for my heart."

— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)

Date: w. 1791-2

"But, sent from God, his presence leaves, / To gather home his ripen'd sheaves, / To call encumber'd souls away / From fleshly bonds to boundless day, / (As when the winged hours excite, / And summon forth the morning-light) / And each to convoy to her place / Before the Eternal Father's face."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)