Date: 1756

"They have inlisted Reason to fight against itself, and employ it's whole Force to prove that it is an insufficient Guide to them in the Conduct of their Lives."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1756

"Not only their Understandings labour continually, which is the severest Labour, but their Hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all Passions, by Avarice, by Ambition, by Fear and Jealousy. No part of the Mind has Rest. Power gradually extirpates from the Mind every hu...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1756

"But the Passions which prop these Opinions are withdrawn one after another, and the cool Light of Reason at the Setting of our Life shews us what a false Splendor played upon these Objects during our more sanguine Seasons."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"This in the mean time is obvious, that the empire of all religious faith over the understanding is wavering and uncertain, subject to every variety of humour, and dependent on the present incidents, which strike the imagination."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1757

"The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant of human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set upon his work."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1757

"Since, therefore, the mind of man appears of so loose and unsteddy a contexture, that, even at present, when so many persons find an interest in continually employing on it the chissel and the hammer, yet are they not able to engrave theological tenets with any lasting impression; how much more ...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1757

"During such calm sunshine of the mind, these spectres of false divinity never make their appearance."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1757

"Their root strikes deeper into the mind, and springs from the essential and universal properties of human nature."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1762

"Stamp Thy whole image on my breast,"

— 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