教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 140 章

GREGORY. In this matter, Peter, it must be known that the images of dreams touch the soul in six ways. For sometimes dreams are produced by fullness or emptiness of the belly, sometimes by illusion, sometimes by thought together with illusion, sometimes by revelation, and sometimes by thought together with revelation. But the two which we named first, we all know by experience; the four which follow, we find in the pages of Sacred Scripture. For unless dreams for the most part came from the hidden enemy through illusion, the wise man would by no means have declared this, saying: 'For dreams have made many to err, and they have failed who put their hope in them' (Sirach 34). Or again, 'You shall not use augury, nor observe dreams' (Leviticus

chapter 19). By which words assuredly it is shown of what detestation those things are which are joined to auguries. Again, unless they sometimes proceeded from thought together with illusion, the wise man would by no means have said: 'Many cares attend dreams' (Ecclesiastes 5). And unless sometimes they arose from the mystery of revelation, neither would Joseph have seen in a dream that he was to be preferred to his brethren (Genesis 37), nor would the angel through a dream have warned the spouse of Mary to flee into Egypt with the child taken up (Matthew 2). Again, unless they sometimes proceeded from thought together with revelation, the prophet Daniel, expounding the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, would by no means have begun from the root of thought, saying:

'You, O king, began to think in your bed what should come to pass hereafter; and he who reveals mysteries showed you the things that are to come' (Daniel 2:29). And a little after: 'You saw, and behold as it were a great statue: that statue, great and lofty in stature, stood before you' (Ibid., 31), and so on. Since therefore Daniel both reverently intimates that the dream is to be fulfilled, and makes plain from what thought it arose, it is openly shown that this is for the most part produced from thought together with revelation. But without doubt, since dreams alternate with so many qualities of things, they ought the more difficultly to be believed, the more it does not readily appear from what impulse they come. The holy

men, however, discern by a certain inward savour the very voices or images of visions amid illusions and revelations, so as to know both what they perceive from the good spirit and what they suffer from illusion. For if the mind be not careful concerning these things, it plunges itself into many vanities through the deceiving spirit, who is often wont to foretell many true things, that at the last he may be able to ensnare the soul by some falsehood.