Date: March 1756

"The thought-kindling light, / Thy prime production, darts upon my mind / Its vivifying beams, my heart illumines, / And fills my soul with gratitude and Thee."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: March 1756

"But not to all,--for hark! the organs blow / Their swelling notes round the cathedral's dome, / And grace th'harmonious choir, celestial feast / To pious ears, and med'cine of the mind."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: June, 1756

"I sent back memory, in heedful guise, / To search the records of preceding years; / Home, like the raven to the ark, she flies, / Croaking bad tidings to my trembling ears."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: June, 1756

"But soul-rejoicing health again returns, / The blood meanders gentle in each vein, / The lamp of life renew'd with vigour burns, / And exil'd reason takes her seat again-- / Brisk leaps the heart, the mind's at large once more, / To love, to praise, to bless, to wonder and adore."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: June, 1756

"Glow, glow, my soul, with pure seraphic fire."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1760

"If thus a golden crown can steel his heart, / O may I ne'er behold him while a king!"

— Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1767

God seals the truth on "our happy hearts"

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1776

"But the greatest happiness of the greatest number requires, that they should be not only imagined but proved: and this they shall now be, in so far as natural probability, aided by whatever support it may be thought to receive from the character of the narrator, can gain credence, for the indica...

— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)

Date: 1777

"Parents may, perhaps, paint it to themselves: they may see (through the mirror of a sympathetic fancy) the poor widow receiving her child from the healing hand of the prophet--a child fresh blooming in the beauties of a second birth."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1782

"Disdainful of those little arts that bind, / In slavish trammels, the inferior mind, / No stage finesse her action shall disgrace, / To trick a generous audience out of praise; / But Truth, and Nature, shall still plead her cause, / And win the tribute of a just applause."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)