Date: 1724
"As a Stone in a Wall, fastened with Mortar, compressed by surrounding Stones, and involved in a Million of other Attractions, cannot fall to the Earth, nor sensibly exert its natural Gravity, no, not so much as to discover there is such a Principle in it; just so, the intelligent Soul, in this h...
preview | full record— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)
Date: 1730
"Thou golden chain 'twixt God and men, / Bless'd Reason! guide my life and pen."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1736
"To live without Restraint, is to live indeed, cry'd she, and I no longer wonder, that the free Mind finds it so difficult to yield to those Fetters, Priests and Philosophers would bind it in, and which were never forged by, nor are consistent with Reason."
preview | full record— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)
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."
preview | full record— Baker, Henry (1698-1774)
Date: January 1739
"I know that the fear of the civil magistrate is as strong a restraint as any of iron, and that I am in as perfect safety as if he were chain'd or imprison'd."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
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."
preview | full record— Wesley, John and Charles
Date: 1760
"O happy stroke, that bursts the bonds of clay, / Darts through the rending gloom the blaze of day, / And wings the soul with boundless flight to soar, / Where dangers threat, and fears alarm no more."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1788
"When the sharp iron wounds his inmost soul, / And his strain'd eyes in burning anguish roll; / Will the parch'd negro find, ere he expire, / No pain in hunger, and no heat in fire?"
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
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 ...
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)