Date: 1630

"She hath a great propensity to do it good and receives such content in it, as fearing the miscarriage of her beloved she bestows it in the inmost closet of her heart."

— Winthrop, John (1588–1649)

Date: 1632

"Secondly, when you have made the heart thus affected with sinne, then take heed that the heart doth not flie off and shake off the yoke."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1632

"Looke as it is with a Gold smith that melteth the metall that he is to make a vessell of, if after the melting thereof, there follow a cooling, it had beene as good it had never beene melted, it is as hard, haply harder, as unfit, haply unfitter, then it was before to make vessell of; but after ...

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1636

"A man's heart is like those two-faced pictures: if you look one way towards one side of them, you shall see nothing but some horrid shape of a devil, or the like; but go to the other side and look again, and you shall see the picture of an angel or of some beautiful woman, &c."

— Goodwin, Thomas (1600-1680)

Date: 1636

"So some have looked over their hearts by signs at one time, and have to their thinking found nothing but hypocrisy, unbelief, hardness, self-seeking; but not long after, examining their hearts again by the same signs, they have espied the image of God drawn fairly upon the table of their hearts."

— Goodwin, Thomas (1600-1680)

Date: 1639

"[T]he onely rule of our conscience, is the Law of God written in our hearts."

— Ames, William (1576-1633)

Date: 1639

"There are some principles so cleare, and written in the hearts of all men, that they cannot erre to obey and practise them."

— Ames, William (1576-1633)

Date: 1639

"[T]he Law of Nature" of "the Law of God ... is naturally written in the hearts of all men."

— Ames, William (1576-1633)

Date: 1640

"The minds of men are after such strange waies besieged, that for to admit the true beams of things, a sincere and polisht Area is wanting"

— Watts, Gilbert (d. 1657)

Date: MS. 1640, 1650

"[T]here is no doubt, if the true doctrine concerning the law of nature, and the properties of a body politic, and the nature of law in general, were perspicuously set down, and taught in the Universities, but that young men, who come thither void of prejudice, and whose minds are yet as white pa...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)