According to Samuel Eliot Morison's Oxford History of the American People, the Puritans "were deeply impressed by a story that their favorite church father, St. Augustine, told in his Confessions. He heard a voice saying, Tolle et lege, 'Pick up and read.' Opening the Bible, his eyes lit on Romans xiii:12-14: 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand; not in carousing and drunkenness, not in debauchery and lust, not in strife and jealousy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts therof'
