The discovery of witchcraft proving that the compacts and contracts of witches with devils and all infernal spirits or familiars are but erroneous novelties and imaginary conceptions : also discovering, how far their power extendeth in killing, tormenting, consuming, or curing the bodies of men, women, children, or animals by charms, philtres, periapts, pentacles, curses, and conjurations : wherein likewise the unchristian practices and inhumane dealings of searchers and witch-tryers upon aged, melancholly, and superstitious people, in extorting confessions by terrors and tortures, and in devising false marks and symptoms, are notably detected ... : in sixteen books / by Reginald Scot ... ; whereunto is added an excellent Discourse of the nature and substance of devils and spirits, in two books : the first by the aforesaid author, the second now added in this third edition ... conducing to the compleating of the whole work, with nine chapters at the beginning of the fifteenth [sic] book of The discovery.

CHAP. II.

Of Divine, Natural, and Casual Dreams; with their differing causes and effects.

MAcrobius recounteth five differences of Images, or rather Imaginations exhibited unto them that sleep, which for the most part do signifie somewhat in admonition. There be also many subdivisions made here∣of, which I think needless to rehearse. In Jasper Peucer they are to be seen,* 1.1 with the causes and occasions of Dreams. There were wont to be delivered from God himself or his Angels, certain Dreams and Visions unto the Prophets, and holy Fathers, according to the saying of Joel, I will powre my spirit upon all flesh,* 1.2 your young men shall dream Dreams, and your old men shall see Visions. These kind of Dreams (I say) were the admonishments and forewarnings of God to his people; as that of Joseph, To abide with Mary his wife,* 1.3 after she was conceived by the holy Ghost; as also, To convey our Saviour Christ into Aegypt, &c. the interpretation whereof are the peculiar gifts of God, which Joseph the Patriarch,* 1.4 and Daniel the Prophet, had most specially.

As for Physical conjectures upon Dreams, the Scriptures reprove them not; for by them the Physicians many times do understand the state of their Patients bodies: For some of them come by means of Choler, Flegme, Melancholy, or Blood; and some by Love, Surfet, hunger, thirst, &c. Galen and Boetius, were said to deal with Devils, because they told their Patients Dreams, or rather by their Dreams, their special Diseases. Howbeit, Physical Dreams are natural, 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 brain, whilest the body is occupied with sleep: for as touching the minde it self, it never sleepeth. These Dreams vary, according to the difference of humors and vapors. There are also casual Dreams, which (as Solomon saith) come through the multitude of business:* 1.5 for as a looking-glass

sheweth the image or figure thereunto opposite; so in Dreams, the phan∣tasie and 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 Dreams, for why? the minde Of that in sleep a view doth take, Which it doth wish and hope to finde, At such time as it is awake.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Peucer in divi∣nat. ex somniis.
• * 1.2

  Joel 2.28.
• * 1.3

  Mat. 1.20. & 2.13.
• * 1.4

  Gen. 39. & 40. & 41. Dan. 2.
• * 1.5

  Eccles. 5.3.