Date: 1697

"What inward Whips my tortur'd Bowels tear? / Fierce Vipers twist their Spires about my Heart, / And Bite, and Sting, and Wound with deadly smart. / With more than Atlas weight my Soul's opprest, / And raging Tempests beat along my breast: / Corroding Flames eat thro' my burning veins, / And all ...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1697

"Conscience enrag'd a fiercer Ravager, / Than ravening Vultures, Did his Bowels tear. / Around his Veins envenom'd Adders clung, / And to the Heart the tortur'd Monarch stung. / Vengeance Divine upon his Soul was pour'd, / And unextinguish'd Flames his Life devour'd."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1698

"I was apt to think the best way were, to let Nature spend it self; and although those who write out of their own Thoughts do it with as much Ease and Pleasure as a Spider spins his Web; yet the World soon grows weary of Controversies, especially when they are about Personal Matters."

— Stillingfleet, Edward (1635-1699)

Date: 1699

"Wing'd with pure Zeal above the Clouds [the mind?] rode, And without Plato's Scale arriv'd at God."

— Pomfret, John (1667-1702)

Date: 1699, 1714

"There is no body who has consider'd ever so little the nature of the sensible part, the Soul or Mind, but knows that in the same manner as without action, motion and employment, the Body languishes and is oppress'd, its Nourishment grows the matter and food of Disease, the Spirits unconsum'd hel...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1699

"Whilst in his Breast the Fury breath'd a Storm, / Then sought her Cell, and reassum'd her Form, / Thus from the Sore altho' the Insect flies, / It leaves a brood of Maggots in disguise."

— Garth, Samuel (1660/61-1719)

Date: 1700, 1717

"Thus all Things are but alter'd, nothing dies; / And here and there th' unbodied Spirit flies, / By Time, or Force, or Sickness dispossess, / And lodges, where it lights, in Man or Beast; / Or hunts without, till ready Limbs it find, / And actuates those according to their kind; / From Tenement ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1700, 1712

"And so our Saviour tells us, that 'whosoever committeth sin is the Servant of sin'; and this is the vilest and hardest Slavery in the World, because it is the Servitude of the Soul, the best and noblest part of our selves; 'tis the subjection of our Reason, which ought to rule and bear Sway over...

— Tillotson, John (1630-1694)

Date: 1700

"My Thoughts should like their Silver Fishes shine, / With quick, bright glitterings thro' each moving line."

— Hopkins, John (b. 1675)

Date: 1704

"Erect your schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the materials be nothing but dirt, spun out of your own entrails (the guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders’ webs, may be imputed to their be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)