ham and Lot, the angel Raphael to Tobias,
whom he conducted into Mesopotamia; or when the demon appeared to
Jesus Christ, and led him to a high mountain, and on the pinnacle of
the Temple at Jerusalem; or when Moses appeared with Elias on Mount
Tabor: for those apparitions are certain from Scripture.

If you will say that these apparitions were seen only in the
imagination and mind of those who saw, or believed they saw angels,
demons, or souls separated from the body, as it happens every day in
our sleep, and sometimes when awake, if we are strongly occupied with
certain objects, or struck with certain things which we desire
ardently or fear exceedingly--as when Ajax, thinking he saw Ulysses
and Agamemnon, or Menelaues, threw himself upon some animals, which he
killed, thinking he was killing those two men his enemies, and whom he
was dying with the desire to wreak his vengeance upon--on this
supposition, the apparition will not be less difficult to explain.
There was neither prepossession nor disturbed imagination, nor any
preceding emotion, which led Abraham to figure to himself that he saw
three persons, to whom he gave hospitality, to whom he spoke, who
promised him the birth of a son, of which he was scarcely thinking at
that time. The three apostles who saw Moses conversing with Jesus
Christ on Mount Tabor were not prepared for that appearance; there was
no emotion of fear, love, revenge, ambition, or any other passion
which struck their imagination, to dispose them to see Moses; as
neither was there in Abraham, when he perceived the three angels who
appeared to him.

Often in our sleep we see, or we believe we see, what has struck our
attention very much when awake; sometimes we represent to ourselves in
sleep things of which we have never thought, which even are repugnant
to us, and which present themselves to our mind in spite of ourselves.
None bethink themselves of seeking the causes of these kinds of
representations; they are attributed to chance, or to some disposition
of the humors of the blood or of the brain, or even of the way in
which the body is placed in bed; but nothing like that is applicable
to the apparitions of angels, demons, or spirits, when these
apparitions are accompanied and followed by converse, predictions and
real effects preceded and predicted by those which appear.

If we have recourse to a pretended fascination of the eyes or the
other senses, which sometimes make us believe that