Date: 1706, 1709

"We are a little Kingdom; But the Man / That chains his Rebel Will to Reasons Throne, / Forms it a large one."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1706

"But oh the crowds of wretched [married] souls / Fetter'd to minds of different moulds, / And chain'd t'eternal strife!"

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1723

"Thou [God] only can'st the wond'rous Links descry / That Minds unbody'd to a Body tye."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723

"Thou know'st the downy Chains that softly bind / Our slumb'ring Sense, when waiting Objects find / No Avenue left open to the Mind."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723

"Can Pains and Prisons Errour's Force controul, / And the chain'd Body loose the fetter'd Soul?"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1743

"He began there to be uneasy; for it shock'd him to find he was commanded to believe against his own judgment in points of Religion, Philosophy, &c. for his genius leading him freely to dispute all propositions, and call all points to account, he was impatient under those fetters of the free-born...

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1748, 1754

"If we attend to that Curiosity, or prodigious Thirst of Knowledge, which is natural to the Mind in every Period of its Progress, and consider withal the endless Round of Business and Care, and the various Hardships to which the Bulk of Mankind are chained down, it is evident, that in this presen...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1760

"There is a certain pleasing force that binds, / Faster than chains do slaves, two willing minds."

— Hamilton, William, of Bangour (1704-1754)

Date: January 19, 1791

"He must have a heart of adamant who could hear a set of traitors puffed up with unexpected and undeserved power, obtained by an ignoble, unmanly, and perfidious rebellion, treating their honest fellow-citizens as rebels, because they refused to bind themselves, through their conscience, against ...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: January 19, 1791

"Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in pro...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)