y serious subjects, and my timorous conscience preserved
it from amusement with other subjects, so that it could not
represent what I would not allow it to seek to understand. But an
extraordinary effervescence aroused my senses in the heat of
repose, and, by virtue of my excellent constitution, operated by
itself a purification which was as strange to me as its cause.
The first feeling which resulted was, I know not why, a sort of
fear. I had observed in my _Philotee_, that we are not allowed to
obtain any pleasure from our bodies except in lawful marriage.
What I had experienced could be called a pleasure. I was then
guilty, and in a class of offences which caused me the most shame
and sorrow, since it was that which was most displeasing to the
Spotless Lamb. There was great agitation in my poor heart,
prayers and mortifications. How could I avoid it? For, indeed, I
had not foreseen it, but at the instant when I experienced it, I
had not taken the trouble to prevent it. My watchfulness became
extreme. I scrupulously avoided positions which I found specially
exposed me to the accident. My restlessness became so great that,
at last I was able to awake before the catastrophe. When I was
not in time to prevent it, I would jump out of bed, with naked
feet on to the polished floor, and with crossed arms pray to the
Saviour to preserve me from the wiles of the devil. I would then
impose some penance on myself, and I have carried out to the
letter what the prophet King probably only transmitted to us as a
figure of Oriental speech, mixing ashes with my bread and
watering it with my tears."

To the early Protestant mind, as illustrated by Luther, there was
something diseased, though not impure, in sexual excitement during sleep;
thus, in his _Table Talk_ Luther remarks that girls who have such dreams
should be married at once, "taking the medicine which God has given." It
is only of comparatively recent years that medical science has obtained
currency for the belief that this auto-erotic process is entirely normal.
Blumenbach stated that nocturnal emissions are normal.[234] Sir James
Paget declared that he had never known celibate men who had not such
emissions from once or twice a week to twice every three months, both
extremes being within the limits of good health, while Sir Lauder Brunton
considers once a fortnight or once a