Date: c. 1603

"But do you suppose, when all the approaches and entrances to men's minds are beset and blocked by the most obscure idols -- idols deeply implanted and, as it were, burned in -- that any clean and polished surface remains in the mirror of the mind on which the genuine natural light of things can ...

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

Date: 1605, 1640

"By which wordes he declares, not obscurely, that God hath framed the Mind of Man, as a Mirror or Glasse capable of the Image of the universall world, and as joyfull to receive the impressions thereof, as the eye joyeth to receave light; and not only delighted in the beholding, the variety of thi...

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

Date: w. 1610-11, 1623

"The charm dissolves apace, / And as the morning steals upon the night, / Melting the darkness, so their rising senses / Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle / Their clearer reason."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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

The heart may be darkened

— Paul of Tarsus (b.c. 10, d.c. 67)

Date: 1611

"The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly."

— Author Unknown

Date: 1615

"For as in that celestiall part, the Sun is predominant, by whose motion, beames, and light, all things haue their brightnesse, luster, and beauty; so in the middest of the chest, the heart resideth, whose likenesse and proportion with the Sun, is such and so great, as the ancient writers haue be...

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

Date: 1621

"As soone as the Exterior sences, busied about the Objects which are proper for them, have gathered the formes of things which come from without, they carry them to the common sence, the which receives them, judgeth of them, and distinguisheth them; and then to preserve them in the absence of the...

— Coeffeteau, F. N. (1574-1623) [trans. into English by Edw. Grimeston]

Date: 1644, 1647

"But the fact that we feel a pain as it were in our foot does not make it certain that the pain exists outside our mind, in the foot, any more than the fact that we see light as it were in the sun, makes it certain the light exists outside us, in the sun."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1645

"Though the candle of Reason excell in light the Glow-worms of sense, Yet it is but a candle not the sun it self;"

— Sterry, Peter (1613-1672)

Date: 1649

"And this evil was brought upon us through his own Covetousnesse, whereby he is blinded and made weak, and sees not the Law of Righteousnesse in his heart, which is the pure light of Reason, but looks abroad for it, and thereby the Creation is cast under bondage and curse, and the creator is slei...

— William Everard, John Palmer, John South, John Courton. William Taylor, Christopher Clifford, John Barker, Ferrard Winstanley, Richard Goodgroome, Thomas Starre, William Hoggrill, Robert Sawyer, Thomas Eder, Henry Bickerstaffe, John Taylor, &c,