12. Stories are told of
certain appearances or visions,2737
which may seem to bring
into this discussion a
question which should not be slighted.
It is said, namely, that dead men have at times either in
dreams or
in some other way appeared to the living who knew not where their
bodies lay unburied, and have pointed out to them the place, and
admonished that the sepulture which was lacking should be afforded
them. These things if we shall answer to be false, we shall be
thought impudently to
contradict the writings of certain
faithful
men, and the senses of them who assure us that such things have
happened to themselves. But it is to be answered, that it does not
follow that we are to account the dead to have sense of these
things, because they appear in
dreams to say or indicate or ask
this. For living men do also appear ofttimes to the living as they
sleep, while they themselves know not that they do appear; and they
are told by them, what they
dreamed, namely, that in their
dream
the speakers saw them doing or saying something. Then if it may be
that a person in a
dream should see me indicating to him something
that has happened or even foretelling something about to happen,
while I am perfectly unwitting of the thing and altogether
regardless not only what he
dreams, but whether he is
awake while I
am
asleep, or he
asleep while I am
awake, or whether at one and the
same time we are both
awake or
asleep, at what time he has the
dream in which he sees me: what
marvel if the dead be unconscious
and insensible of these things, and, for all that, are seen by the
living in their
dreams, and say something which those on awaking
find to be true? By angelical operations, then, I should think it
is effected, whether permitted from above, or commanded, that they
seem in
dreams to say something about burying of their bodies, when
they whose the bodies are are utterly unconscious of it. Now this
is sometimes serviceably done; whether for some sort of solace to
the survivors, to whom pertain those dead whose likenesses
2738
appear to
them as they
dream; or whether that by these admonitions the human
race may be made to have regard to
humanity of sepulture, which,
allow that it be no help to the departed, yet is there culpable
irreligiousness in slighting of it. Sometimes however, by
fallacious visions,
2739
men are cast into great errors,
who deserve to
suffer this. As, if one should see in a
dream, what
Æneas by poetic falsity is told to have seen in the
world beneath:
and there should appear to him the likeness of some unburied man,
which should speak such words as Palinurus is said to have spoken
to him; and when he
awakes, he should find the body in that place
where he heard say while dreaming, that it lay unburied, and was
admonished and asked to bury it when found; and because he finds
this to be true, should believe that the dead are buried on purpose
that their
souls may pass to places from which he dreamed that the
souls of men unburied are by an infernal law prohibited: does he
not, in believing all this, exceedingly swerve from the path of
truth?
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
