contrary. For you cannot
do or say anything now whereby you are sure to be awake but what
you have ere this, or hereafter may, think yourself as surely to
do the selfsame thing indeed while you be all the while asleep and
do nothing but lie dreaming.

VINCENT: Well, well, uncle, though I have ere this thought myself
awake while I was indeed asleep, yet for all this I know well
enough that I am awake now. And so do you too, though I cannot
find the words by which I may with reason force you to confess it,
without your always driving me off by the example of my dream.

ANTHONY: Meseemeth, cousin, this is very true. And likewise
meseemeth the manner and difference between some kind of true
revelations and some kind of false illusions is like that which
standeth between the things that are done awake and the things
that in our dreams seem to be done when we are sleeping. That is,
he who hath that kind of revelation from God is as sure of the
truth as we are of our own deeds while we are awake. And he who is
deluded by the devil is in such wise deceived as they are by their
dream, and worse, too. And yet he reckoneth himself for the time
as sure as the other, saving that one believeth falsely, the other
truly knoweth. But I say not, cousin, that this kind of sure
knowledge cometh in every kind of revelation. For there are many
kinds, of which it would be too long to talk now. But I say that
God doth certainly send some such to a man in some thing, or may.

VINCENT: Yet then this religious man of whom we speak, when I show
him the scripture against his revelation and therefore call it an
illusion, may bid me with reason go mind my own affairs. For he
knoweth well and surely himself that his revelation is very good
and true and not any false illusion, since for all the general
commandment of God in the scripture, God may dispense where he will
and when he will, and may command him to do the contrary. For he
commanded Abraham to kill his own son, and Sampson had, by
inspiration of God, commandment to kill himself by pulling down the
house upon his own head at the feast of the Philistines.

Now, if I would then do as you bade me right now, tell him that
such apparitions may be illusions, and since God's word is in the
scripture against him plain for the prohibition, he must perceive
the truth of his revelation whereby I may know it is not a false
illusion; then shall he in turn bid me tell him whereby I can
prove mysel