Date: c. 1603

"On waxen tablets you cannot write anything new until you rub out the old. With the mind it is not so; there you cannot rub out the old till you have written in the new."

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

Date: 1606

To properly prepare a soul for God, one must "qualify it, cleanse it, strip it, and denude it of all opinion, belief, inclination, make it like a white sheet of paper, dead to itself and the world, so that God may live and operate in it."

— Charron, Pierre (1541-1603)

Date: 1606

"There is a ground or principle written in every mans heart in the world, none excepted, that there is a God."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: 1606

An "evill and hinderance to wisdome ... is the confusion and captivitie of his passions, and turbulent affections, whereof he must disfurnish and free himselfe, to the end he may be emptie and neate, like a white paper, and be made a subject more fit to receive tincture and impressions of wisdome...

— Charron, Pierre (1541-1603); Lennard, Sampson (d. 1633)

Date: 1611

The law of nature is "written in the hearts of all men"

— Sclater, William (bap. 1575, d. 1627)

Date: 1611

In the Judgment "the register bookes of all mens consciences [shall] bee opened up, and laide abroad, and the great register of God his predestination, & booke of life shall be opened, and made patent, and the dead shal bee judged according to their workes, written and registred in their conscien...

— Napier, John, of Merchiston (1550-1617)

Date: 1614

"Now, then in judgement, so are workes lookt on, as collation alwaies must bee of the bookes, to see if our names be written in the booke of life, as assurance of life and joyfull peace are written in our consciences."

— Forbes, Patrick, of Corse (1564-1635)

Date: 1615

"Afterwards, as a Merchant that had lost all his inheritance in one bottom, he was to begin the world anew, and to gather an estate or stock of knowledge, by the travel and industry of his soul and body; yet was not his soul Abrasa Tabula, a playned Table, there remained some Lineaments which the...

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

Date: April 18, 1619

"when thy book (the history of thy life,) is torn, 1000. sins of thine own torn out of thy memory, wilt thou then present thy self thus defac'd and mangled to almighty God?"

— Donne, John (1572-1631)

Date: 1621

" It was (as I said) once well agreeing with reason, and there was an excellent consent and harmony between them, but that is now dissolved, they often jar, reason is overborne by passion: Fertur equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas, as so many wild horses run away with a chariot, and will not ...

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)