their presence, sedulity, and attendance on
the cradle being, during all that space, held unnecessary. Even just so,
when our body is at rest, that the concoction is everywhere accomplished,
and that, till it awake, it lacks for nothing, our soul delighteth to
disport itself and is well pleased in that frolic to take a review of its
native country, which is the heavens, where it receiveth a most notable
participation of its first beginning with an imbuement from its divine
source, and in contemplation of that infinite and intellectual sphere,
whereof the centre is everywhere, and the circumference in no place of the
universal world, to wit, God, according to the doctrine of Hermes
Trismegistus, to whom no new thing happeneth, whom nothing that is past
escapeth, and unto whom all things are alike present, remarketh not only
what is preterit and gone in the inferior course and agitation of sublunary
matters, but withal taketh notice what is to come; then bringing a relation
of those future events unto the body of the outward senses and exterior
organs, it is divulged abroad unto the hearing of others. Whereupon the
owner of that soul deserveth to be termed a vaticinator, or prophet.
Nevertheless, the truth is, that the soul is seldom able to report those
things in such sincerity as it hath seen them, by reason of the
imperfection and frailty of the corporeal senses, which obstruct the
effectuating of that office; even as the moon doth not communicate unto
this earth of ours that light which she receiveth from the sun with so much
splendour, heat, vigour, purity, and liveliness as it was given her. Hence
it is requisite for the better reading, explaining, and unfolding of these
somniatory vaticinations and predictions of that nature, that a dexterous,
learned, skilful, wise, industrious, expert, rational, and peremptory
expounder or interpreter be pitched upon, such a one as by the Greeks is
called onirocrit, or oniropolist. For this cause Heraclitus was wont to
say that nothing is by dreams revealed to us, that nothing is by dreams
concealed from us, and that only we thereby have a mystical signification
and secret evidence of things to come, either for our own prosperous or
unlucky fortune, or for the favourable or disastrous success of another.
The sacred Scriptures testify no less, and profane histories assure us of
it, in both which are exposed to our view a thousand several kinds of
strange adventures, which have be