Date: 1682

"If it so happen, that a Man be ty'd up to Business, which he can neither loosen, nor break off; let him imagine those Shackles upon his Mind to be Irons upon his Legs: They are Troublesome at first, but when there's no Remedy but Patience, Custom makes them easie to us, and Necessity gives us Co...

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

Date: 1682

"The Body is but the Clog and Prisoner of the Mind; tossed up and down, and persecuted with Punishments, Violences, and Diseases; but the Mind it self is Sacred, and Eternal, and exempt from the Danger of all Actual Impression."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

Date: 1682

"The Body is but the Prison, or the Clog of the Mind; subjected to Punishments, Robberies, Diseases; but the Mind is Sacred, and Spiritual, and Liable to no Violence."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

Date: June, 1684

"All this I think is in the power of Love, and yet it cannot work a change in me, my heart is link'd so firmly to your Virtues. Magick cannot break the chain."

— Lacy, John (c.1615-1681)

Date: 1686, 1712

"When first my Soul put on its fleshly Load, / It was Imprison'd in the dark Abode; / My Feet were Fetters, my Hands Manacles, / My Sinews Chains, and all Confinement else; / My Bones the Bars of my loath'd Prison grate; / My Tongue the Turn-key, and my Mouth the Gate."

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1686, 1712

"O! that some usual Labour were injoyn'd, / And not the Tyrant Vice enslav'd my mind! / No weight of Chains cou'd grieve my captive Hands, / Like the loath'd Drudg'ry of its base Commands."

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1687

"And Monarch's can depose, or can create: / With secret Chains their Subjects Conscience binds, / And lays inchanted Fetters on their Minds."

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

Date: 1689

And yet there is, there is one prize / Lock'd in an adamantine Breast; / Storm that then, Love, if thou be'st wise, / A Conquest above all the rest, / Her Heart, who binds all Hearts in chains, / Castanna's Heart untouch'd remains."

— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"He that has his chains knocked off, and the prison doors set open to him, is perfectly at liberty, because he may either go or stay, as he best likes; though his preference be determined to stay, by the darkness of the night, or illness of the weather, or want of other lodging."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"[N]othing is so unfit to assist the mind in that, as syllogism; which running away with one assumed probability, or one topical argument, pursues that till it has led the mind quite out of sight of the thing under consideration; and forcing it upon some remote difficulty, holds it fast there, in...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)