Patristic A.D. 253
“Or, a way must be prepared in our heart for the Lord, for the heart of man is large and spacious if it has become clean. For imagine not that in the size of the body, but in the virtue of the understanding, consists that greatness which must receive the knowledge of the truth. Prepare then in thy heart by good conversation a way for the Lord, and by perfect works pursue the path of life, that so the word of God may have free course in thee.”
Catena Aurea: Gospel of Luke, as excerpted in the Catena Aurea on Luke 3:3-6
PD · J. H. Newman (Oxford, 1843) ↗