Date: 1762

"Your wood I will convert to brass; / Your souls shall take a finer mould, / The Jewish into Christian pass, / The iron age be turn'd to gold."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1762

"What but the casting in of grace / This stony, iron heart, can raise, / To heavenly turn my earthly love, / And lift my soul to things above"

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1762

"Out of their hearts the dross remove, / Their worldly care, and worldly love; / As silver and as gold refine"

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1766

"Perhaps I may catch up even one from the gulph, and that will be great gain; for is there upon earth a gem so precious as the human soul?"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1766

"We should then find that creatures, whose souls are held as dross, only wanted the hand of a refiner; we should then find that wretches, now stuck up for long tortures, lest luxury should feel a momentary pang, might, if properly treated, serve to sinew the state in times of danger."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold which defies destruction: but gold may be so concealed in baser matter that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in unrefined and plebe...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1780

"My Potter stamp on me thy clay, Thy only stamp of love!"

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: 1781

"Gold hath steeled your hearts"

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

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 ...

— Agutter, William (1758-835)

Date: 1791

"I will venture to say, that in no writings whatever can be found more bark and steel for the mind, if I may use the expression; more that can brace and invigorate every manly and noble sentiment."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)