Date: 1620

"And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it."

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1621

One may have "A soule tra-lucent in an open brest"

— Sylvester, Joshua (1562/3-;1618)

Date: 1641

A geometrical argument fills the mind and allows one to see everything at a single glance

— Mersenne, Marin (1588-1648)

Date: 1641

A calm mind, free from the hurly-burly of external things, may fix its gaze on itself

— Arnauld, Antoine (1612-1694)

Date: 1641

"Now if we are to become aware of something, it is necessary for the thing to act on the cognitive faculty by transmitting its semblance to the faculty or by informing the faculty with its semblance. Hence it seems clear that the faculty itself, not being outside itself, cannot transmit a semblan...

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1651

"Attraction is a ministering faculty, which, as a loadstone doth iron, draws meat into the stomach, or as a lamp doth oil; and this attractive power is very necessary in plants, which suck up moisture by the root, as, another mouth, into the sap, as a like stomach."

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)

Date: 1656

"Some things do through our Judgement pass / As through a Multiplying Glass."

— Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667)

Date: 1658

"May not our eyes bee very well defin'd / The Looking-glass of Nature, and the minde."

— Billingsley, Nicholas (bap. 1633, d. 1709)

Date: 1660, 1676

"Conscience is the brightness and splendor of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of the Divine Majesty, and the Image of the goodness of God."

— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)

Date: 1660, 1676

In sum, It is the image of God; and as in the mysterious Trinity, we adore the will, memory, and understanding, and Theology contemplates three persons in the analogies, proportions, and correspondences, of them: so in this also we see plainly that Conscience is that likeness of God, in which he ...

— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)