Date: 1677

"Or else unto those Birds (aspiring) rare, / The Soul contemplative I may compare, / Of whom King David worthily attests, / That by the Holy Altar build their Nests: / So Meditation's said in holy Story, / To build her Nest about the Throne of Glory."

— Speed, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. 1679?)

Date: w. 1677, 1702

"Vain wandring Thoughts, that crowd within my Breast / Do oft obstruct my Soul from Solid Rest; / like to vagrant Clouds, obscure the Mind / Which should to serious watching be inclin'd."

— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)

Date: w. 1679, 1702

"The Sun of Righteousness, which when it shines / With its Resplendent Conqu'ring Ray, refines / The drossy Nature; rightly purifies / The Heart, consuming all Impurities."

— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)

Date: w. 1684, 1702

"These rugged Walls, less grievous are to me, / Than those bedeck'd with curious Arras be / T'a guilty Conscience; to a wounded Heart, / A Palace cannot palliate that smart: / Tho' drunk with Pleasure, dull with Opiates, / Some seem as Senseless of their sad Estates, / Till on their Dying-Beds Co...

— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)

Date: 1729

"Secondly, 'Tis just matter of wonder & astonishment that ever one spark of faith was kindled in such an heart as thine is; [end page 124] an heart which had no predisposition or inclination in the least to believe; yea, it was not rasa tabula, like clean paper, void of any impression of f...

— Flavell, John (bap. 1630, d. 1691)

Date: 1742

"He binds my Name upon his Arm, / And seals it on his Heart."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1754

"In the first place, we must offer him the tribute of our gold, as to our true King; that is, we must daily present him with our souls, stampt with his own image, and burnished with divine love."

— Challoner, Richard (1691-1781)

Date: 1754

"Our souls are stampt with God's own image, to this very end, that we should give them in tribute to him, by perfect love: 'render then to God the things that are God's'; by daily offering your whole souls up to him, by fervent acts of love; and you shall have given him your gold."

— Challoner, Richard (1691-1781)

Date: 1757

"But when it is such a truth, as I do not only hear, but feel; and it comes home to my own very sense and experience: shall any sophistical reasonings wrangle me out of it; what though I cannot resolve the question, [GREEK CHARACTERS] whence the evil was derived: whether from the soul formed in t...

— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)

Date: 1757

"And whatever any talk of (the rasa tabula,) an indifferency by nature, to virtue or vice: never could I find any such thing; but all men inclined the wrong way: and abundance of work, by discipline, and the grace of God, to make any one better than the rest."

— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)