Date: 1603

"Yea, from the table of my memory / I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, / All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, / That youth and observation copied there, / And thy commandment all alone shall live / Within the book and volume of my brain / Unmixed with baser matter."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: c. 1603

"On waxen tablets you cannot write anything new until you rub out the old. With the mind it is not so; there you cannot rub out the old till you have written in the new."

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

Date: 1604

"[W]e know not how soone our Lord and master will call us to a reckoninge and therefore it behoveth us to have our accompts alwayes perfect and the bookes of our consciences made up in readinesse."

— Downham, John (1571-1652)

Date: 1606

To properly prepare a soul for God, one must "qualify it, cleanse it, strip it, and denude it of all opinion, belief, inclination, make it like a white sheet of paper, dead to itself and the world, so that God may live and operate in it."

— Charron, Pierre (1541-1603)

Date: 1606

"There is a ground or principle written in every mans heart in the world, none excepted, that there is a God."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: 1606

An "evill and hinderance to wisdome ... is the confusion and captivitie of his passions, and turbulent affections, whereof he must disfurnish and free himselfe, to the end he may be emptie and neate, like a white paper, and be made a subject more fit to receive tincture and impressions of wisdome...

— Charron, Pierre (1541-1603); Lennard, Sampson (d. 1633)

Date: 1609

"Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain / Full charactered with lasting memory"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: w. c. 54-8, trans. 1611

"For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else exc...

— Paul of Tarsus (b.c. 10, d.c. 67)

Date: w. c. 48-58, trans. 1611

"Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart."

— Paul of Tarsus (b.c. 10, d.c. 67)

Date: w. c. 48-58, trans. 1611

"Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men."

— Paul of Tarsus (b.c. 10, d.c. 67)