Date: 1718

"And now the fair Ideas, which possest / Your Mind, by loose and vicious Thoughts opprest, / How will you wing your Way to Realms above, / And feast your Soul with Extasies of Love"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1721

"My Heart do's like soft Wax relent, / And midst my Bowels flow"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1721

"Bless God, who did not give our Soul / To their sharp Teeth a Prey."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1721

"Our Soul, as from a broken Snare / A Bird escapes, is fled."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1722

"An empire, which thy [Jesus'] armies did not gain, / Not purchas'd by the blood of thousands slain, / But by thy own; an empire o'er the mind / Erected, and for heavenly ends design'd."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1722

"[E]rring conscience must as well controll /Our acts, as when it moves and guides the soul"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1722

"He, who the revelation owns, yet brings / The sacred truths and high mysterious things / Of Christian faith, which heav'nly light reveals, / To reason's bar, to a wrong court appeals."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1722

"For reason, reason's self being judge, by laws, / That rule her province, can't decide the cause."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1722

"The sole business of reason in this case is to examine and judge of the evidence that is brought to prove that any proposition about the nature of God is clearly revealed by himself."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1722

"[W]ho can tell / How each [image] awaken'd from its little cell / Starts forth, and how the soul's command it hears / And soon on fancy's theatre appears?"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)