Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"After this their happiness depends upon their self-control; if the better elements of the mind which lead to order and philosophy prevail, then they pass their life here in happiness and harmony--masters of themselves and orderly--enslaving the vicious and emancipating the virtuous elements of t...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 58

"Even the all-embracing universe and God who is its guide extends himself forth into outward things, and yet altogether returns from all sides back to himself. Let our mind do the same thing: when, following its bodily senses it has by means of them sent itself forth into the things of the outwar...

— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)

Date: 1596

"Nay it is (as it were) a little god sitting in the middle of mens hearts arraigning them in this life as they shall be arraigned for their offences at the tribunall seate of the euerliuing god in the day of iudgement."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: 1615

"If you look into the seats and residence of the faculties of the mind, you shall find the rational faculty in the highest place, namely in the brain, compassed in on every side with a skull; the faculty of anger, in the Heart; the faculty of lust or desire in the Liver: & therefore we may gather...

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

Date: 1635

"Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, / But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue."

— Donne, John (1572-1631)

Date: 1642

"The heart of man is the place the Devils dwell in: I feel sometimes a Hell within my self; Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast, Legion is revived in me."

— Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)

Date: 1651

"And it is called spiritual, not that it remains not a body, but because it remains not such a body, but is so framed to the soul that both itself and all the operations of all the powers in it are immediately and entirely at the arbitrary imperium and dominion of the soul; and that as the soul i...

— Goodwin, Thomas (1600-1680)

Date: 1660, 1676

"That providence which governs all the world, is nothing else but God present by his providence: and God is in our hearts by his Laws: he rules in us by his Substitute, our conscience"

— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)

Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"As soon as ever the Parts begin to be form'd by Nature, this Animal and active Principle begins to exert its Heat and Force, being lodged in the Heart as in the Centre of the Body, from whence, as the Vessels begin also to be form'd, it distributes it self towards the extreme Regions, communicat...

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)

Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"Indeed, whosoever considers the curious Inventions of Wit, the vast Comprehension and subtile Inferences of the Understanding, the wonderful Sagacity and Prospect of Prudence, the noble Endowments and Speculations of the Mind, the quick Transitions and Successions of Thoughts, together with the ...

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)