Date: 397-401

"Surely thy law, O Lord, punishes thievery; yea, and this law is so written in our hearts [lex scripta in cordibus hominum], that iniquity itself cannot blot it out."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 397-401

"et certe non est interior litterarum scientia quam scripta conscientia, id se alteri facere quod nolit pati." ["Assuredly no science of letters can be so innate as the record of conscience, 'that he is doing to another what from another he would be loth to suffer.'"]

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 399-426

"Well now, let us see where we are to locate what you might call the border between the outer and the inner man."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 399-426

"The Trinity's "own light seemed to be present around us, still, no trinity appeared to us in nature, for in the midst of that splendor we did not keep the eye of our mind fixed steadily upon searching for it ... because that ineffable light beat back our gaze, and the weakness of our mind was co...

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 416

"And then at times a man's slave, worn out by the commands of an unfeeling master, finds rest in flight. Whither can the servant of sin flee? Himself he carries with him wherever he flees. An evil conscience flees not from itself; it has no place to go to; it follows itself."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 413-427

"And this grand and wonderful instinct belongs to men alone of all animals; for, though some of them have keener eyesight than ourselves for this world's light, they cannot attain to that spiritual light with which our mind is somehow irradiated, so that we can form right judgments of all things."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 413-427

"Wherefore, as the life of the flesh is the soul, so the blessed life of man is God, of whom the sacred writings of the Hebrews say, 'Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.'"

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 413-427

"Does not Tully, disputing of the difference of governments, ... say, that we command our bodily members as sons, they are so obedient, and that we must keep a harder form of rule over our mind's vicious parts, as our slaves?"

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: c. 421

The soul "commands the body as a king commands his subjects or a parent his children. It commands lust as a master commands a slave, since it coerces and breaks it. Kings, emperors, magistrates, fathers, peoples rule their subjects and associates as the soul rules the body. Masters harass their s...

— St. Augustine (354-430)