The second Chapter. 178.
Of divine, naturall, and casuall dreames, with their differing causes and effects.
MACROBIUS recounteth five differences of images, or rather imaginations exhibited unto them that sleepe, which for the most part doo signifie somewhat in admonition. There be also many subdivisions made hereof, which I thinke needlesse to reherse. In Jasper PeucerPeucer in divinat. ex somniis. they are to be seene, with the causes and occasions of dreames. There were woont to be delivered from God himselfe or his angels, certeine dreames and visions unto the prophets and holie fathers: according to the saieng of Joel;Joel. 2. I will powre my spirit upon all flesh, your yoong men shall dreame dreames, and your old men shall see visions. These kind of dreames (I say)Matth. 1. 20. were the admonishments and forewarnings of God to his people: as that of Joseph, to abide with Marie his wife, after she was conceived by the Holie-ghost,Matth. 2, 13. as also to conveie our Saviour Christ into Aegypt, &c: the interpretation whereof are the peculiar gifts of God, which Joseph the patriarch,Gen. 39. & 40. & 41.
Dani. 2. and Daniel the prophet had most speciallie.
As for physicall conjectures upon dreames, the scriptures *improove[*? reproove] them not: for by them the physicians manie times doo understand the state of their patients bodies. For some of them come by meanes of choler, flegme, melancholie, or bloud; and some by love, surfet, hunger, thirst, &c. Gallen and Boetius were said to deale with divels, bicause they/131. told so justlie their patients dreames, or rather by their dreames their speciall diseases. Howbeit, physicall dreames are naturall, and the cause of them dwelleth in the nature of man. For they are the inward actions of the mind in the spirits of the braine, whilest the bodie is occupied with sleepe: for as touching the mind it selfe, it never sleepeth. These dreames varie, according to the difference of humors and vapors. There are also casuall dreames, which (as SalomonEccles. 5. saith)/179. come through the multitude of businesse. For as a looking glasse sheweth the image or figure thereunto opposite: so in dreames, the phantasie & imagination informes the understanding of such things as haunt the outward sense. Whereupon the poet saith:
Somnia ne cures, nam mens humana quod optat,
Dum vigilat sperans, per somnum cernit id ipsum:
Englished by Abraham Fleming.Regard no dreames, for why the mind
Of that in sleepe a view dooth take,
Which it dooth wish and hope to find,
At such time as it is awake.