Date: 360 B.C.

"For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

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

The heart may be darkened

— Paul of Tarsus (b.c. 10, d.c. 67)

Date: 1687, 1691

"Pray the Great God with me, That he will illuminate my Understanding with Inward Lights, until the Man promised by our Holy Prophet."

— Marana, Giovanni Paolo (1642-1693); Anonymous [William Bradshaw (fl. 1700) or Robert Midgley (1655?-1723)?]

Date: 1697

"What is it then that lights the Candle again, when it is put out?"

— Burnet, Thomas (c.1635-1715)

Date: 1697

It is commendable for "a Man to attend to his own Thoughts and Conceptions, and the best Light he hath"

— Burnet, Thomas (c.1635-1715)

Date: 1698

"The First Step we take into our Inmost Thoughts, we meet with and discover these Primary Truths: whose Self-Evidence is the Earliest Light that dawns to our Soul, as soon as over her Power of Knowing awakens into Action."

— Sergeant, John (1622-1707)

Date: 1698

"From all which Considerations, (any One of which might suffice,) I may Safely and Evidently conclude, that, in point of Evidence of its Truth, and Stability of its Grounds, nothing can be any way comparable to the Light which strikes the Eye of our Understanding, by its steady Rays emitted from ...

— Sergeant, John (1622-1707)

Date: 1698

"So that, which way soever you wriggle, to avoid our Rule, the Light of Common Reason, or Natural Logick, will force you into it, whether you will or no."

— Sergeant, John (1622-1707)

Date: 1698

"Nay, it must be such as may be produc'd openly, by the Asserters of any Truth; that, by alledging It, they may be able to convince others, that what they maintain is a Real Truth, and not some Phantastick Conceit of their own; without which, their Clear and Distinct Perception is Invisible, and ...

— Sergeant, John (1622-1707)

Date: 1704

"The first ingredient toward the art of canting, is, a competent share of inward light; that is to say, a large memory plentifully fraught with theological polysyllables, and mysterious texts from holy writ, applied and digested by those methods and mechanical operations already related:...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)