“What is the heart but a spring, and the nerves but so many strings, and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body?”

“For such is the nature of man, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.”

“As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body”

“It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.”

“For, from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night. And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power.”

“A man's conscience and his judgment are the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous”

“In the very shadows of doubt a thread of reason (so to speak) begins, by whose guidance we shall escape to the clearest light.”