Date: 1720

"His Fancy still awake; the roving Guest / Usurps the Throne of Reason in his Breast: / Forms great Ideas, and religious Schemes, / A busy mime, and floats in golden Dreams."

— Amhurst, Nicholas (1697-1742)

Date: First performed February 17, 1720.

"What were Dominion, Pomp, / The Wealth of Nations, nay of all the World, / The World it self, or what a thousand Worlds, / If weigh'd with Faith unspotted, heav'nly Truth, / Thoughts free from Guilt, the Empire of the Mind, / And all the Triumphs of a God-like Breast / Firm and unmov'd in the gr...

— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)

Date: 1720

"The prodigious stupid Bigottry of the People also was irksome to me; I thought there was something in it very sordid, the entire Empire the Priests have over both the Souls and Bodies of the People, gave me a Specimen of that Meanness of Spirit which is no where else to be seen but in Italy, esp...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1720

"Well, I know that too, William, said I; but the Captain is a Man will be ruled by Reason; what have you to say to it?."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1721, 1722

"With us there is an uniformity of character, as it is all forced: we do not see people as they are, but as they are obliged to appear: in this state of slavery, both of body and mind, it is their fears only that speak, which have but one language, and that not of nature, which expresses herself ...

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Date: 1721, 1722

"This prince is, besides, a great magician; he exercises his empire even over the minds of his subjects, and makes them think as he pleases."

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Date: 1721, 1722

"The soul united to a body is continually under its tyrannical power."

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Date: April 18, 1721

"One Argument is ballanc'd by another, / And Reason Reason meets in doubtful Fight, / And Proofs are countermin'd by equal Proofs. / No more I'll bear this Battel of the Mind, / This inward Anarchy."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1722

"An empire, which thy [Jesus'] armies did not gain, / Not purchas'd by the blood of thousands slain, / But by thy own; an empire o'er the mind / Erected, and for heavenly ends design'd."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1722

"[E]rring conscience must as well controll /Our acts, as when it moves and guides the soul"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)