The heathens were constantly the dupes of those who professed the vain arts of disco-vering the future; every one might have said, "I fall a prey to ev'ry prophet's schemes. And to old women who interpret dreams."

* De Natura Deorum L. iii. C. 6.

Cicero illustrates, pleasantly enough, the views of interpreters of dreams, relating, that a man dreamed there was an egg laid under his bed ; the soothsayer told him, that where' he imagined he saw an egg, there was a treasure ; and in digging he discovered silver, and some gold in the midst of it. Upon which, in testimony of his gratitude, he brought some silver to the soothsayer, who asked him, why he did not give him some of the yolk also.

Nothing could be more precarious than the grounds upon which men formed their conjectures ; or mere superstitious than the opinions and practices which they built upon them.

Herodotus relates of the Nazamenes, that when they dreamed, they approached the monuments of their ancestors, and there slept, and were influenced by the images which occurred, and these were probably considered as the suggestions of those spirits, which haunted the receptacles of the dead. Ghosts are called by Homer, "people of dreams *;" and by Lycophron,"night-walking terrors."

The number of dreams increased probably with the anxiety which prevailed in the apprehension of great events, and the solicitude to avert their inauspicious intimations produced many vain rites.

Tibullus speaks of dreams

"With thrice-consecrated cates to be repell'd†."

The vanities and evil arts to which men had recourse in the delusion of these errors, were so soon displayed, that many of God's earliest precepts were directed against them, forbidding his people to use divination, or to become observers of times, or enchanters, or con-suitors with familiar spirits or wizards, or necromancers.

Chapter XIX 15 Odyss. ↓.

† lib. i. Eleg. 5. See Ovid's Metamorph. L. xii. 1. 10.

Philo informs us, that the law of Moses banished from the Jewish republic all persons of this description, because they were led by specious and plausible conjectures, and were unprovided by any sure and fixed maxims *.

Among the heathens were many whose good sense and philosophy revolted at the follies of this kind which prevailed, Jocasta says, in the CEdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles,

"Let not a fear perplex thee, OEdipus:

Mortals know nothing, of futurity,

And these prophetic fears are all impostors †."

Menander ridiculed the disposition to be affected by the impressions which prevailed; we are tortured, says he, if any one sneeze; we are enraged, if any one speak in an unpleasant tone; we are terrified at a dream, and scared out of our wits if an owl scream.

* Lib. de Monarch. † Act. iii.

136 Quintius exclaims in the words of Ennius,

"I value not the Marsyan arts, nor start At ought that vain diviners can impart; I laugh at him who augury esteems, Or listens to expositors of dreams: They nor in art nor science are inspir'd, But slaves in superstitious service hired. Idle, or mad, or poor, they fain would shew The path to others which themselves don't know. They promise riches, bat a fee request, Secure their portion, and give you the rest."

Many, however, who might be supposed to have been superior to all such credulity, appear to have been unable to shake off the superstitious fetters of the times in which they lived. Among the Romans, Tacitus, who is justly regarded as a philosophical historiau, but who sometimes betrays a confined habit of thinking, as well as great want of information, seems, with other writers, to have attributed more to the Chaldaean arts than they probably merited. He appears particularly, as well as Suetonius *, to have credited the pretensions of Thrasullus, who was the preceptor of Tiberius, when at Rhodes, in this mysterious science. He relates, in the sixth bode of his Annals, that Tiberius, as often as he had occasion to consult in such concerns, was accustomed to ascend a lofty part of his house with the privity of one freedman, who was ignorant of letters, and of robust body, and who generally preceded the person whose art Tiberius wished to prove, conducting him through broken and precipitous paths (for the house hung over a rock), and who, if there was any suspicion of ignorance or fraud, was employed to precipitate the diviner into the sea, that no informer against his secret practices might exist. When Thrasullus was con-ducted over these rocks, after he had moved Tiberius by his answers, predicting his accession to the empire, and other future events, with much skill, he was inquired of whether he had also cast his own nativity, and what year and day he was to have. He having measured the position and space of the stars, began first to hesitate, and then to tremble; and the more be examined, he appealed the more and more filled with wonder and fear; and at length he exclaimed, that an ambiguous and almost the extremest danger threatened him. Upon which Tiberius embraced him, acknowledging his skill, and assuring him of his safety; and re-ceiving what he had said as oracular, he afterwards held him among his intimate friends.

* In August. 98. Dio. 55. p. 555. 58.

Upon which relation the historian professes, that after hearing these and such like accounts, he is at a loss to determine whether mortal affairs roll on by fate and immutable necessity, or by chance; and after discoursing concerning various opinions not easily explained, he represents it as a general persuasion not inconsistent with the convictions of most men, that the future events of every man's life are predestined from the beginning; but that some tilings happen differently from what is predicted, through the error of those who proclaim what they are ignorant of; that so the fame of the art is destroyed, of which his own and former ages tarnished illustrious proofs; since, as he adds, the empire was promised to Nero by the son of the same Thrasullus.

All that can be said upon this subject is, that as the heathens were not enlightened by revealed religion, we cannot wonder that they wandered into all the labyrinths of error; and it perhaps may be admitted, tint their delusions were increased by the arts and suggestions of evil spirits, who,before the coming of Christ, seem to have ruled with considerable ascendancy in every department of superstition, and possibly even promoted a delusive confidence in the arts of divination, by communicating some intimations of such events as their knowledge or sagacity might discover or conjecture.

The arts of divination, therefore, and their professors in every department, appear to deserve nothing but contempt; and attention to them is more especially reprehensible, since the diffusion of knowledge which has been produced by the communication of the. Gospel.

Their professors indeed, have been justly ridiculed,

"They may attempt to tell us . What Adam dreamt of, when his bride Came from the closet in his side;" but it is extreme folly to suffer them to harass our minds, or to mislead us to a delusive confidence in their pretences. The intelligence which they furnish amounts to little more than what Quevedo, in his harmless Discovery collected, who tells us,

" From second causes this I gather. Nought shall befall us good or bad, Either upon the land or water, But what the great Disposer wills."

If dreams have any foundation, and fore-shew events which must happen, there must in general be but little use in contemplating their prophetic scenes. If they predict circumstances which are contingent and conditional, their accomplishment can be influenced only by an adherence to the general rules of the Gospel, and we should therefore endeavour that our faith stand not in the wisdom of man, but in that of God; and reject all those indications as dangerous, by which artful men have imposed on credulity, as "Richard laid plots by drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, To set his brother Clarence and the king In deadly hate one against the other."

The regard paid to dreams has generated, in modern as well as ancient times, many silly oractices and extravagant contrivances, now insensibly falling into neglect and oblivion.

Among the fanciful arts which were practised in the seclusion of the convent, the Franciscan mode was remarkable; like many other customs, it originated in pagan folly. These good fathers, in imitation of ancient priests, (who, after performing their religious rites and sacrifices, laid down on the skins of the victims in order to obtain dreams,) were accustomed to commit themselves to sleep on mats upon which some ecstatical brother had slept, expeering, after the performance of their sacrifices of the mass, to be favoured with the suggestions of inspiration.

Some writer of natural magic has prescribed perfumes for the procuring of pleasant dreams, and some have represented prophetic dreams to be attainable by the operation of such physical impressions as vegetable substances may produce. Flax, flea-wort, and other productions, are mentioned as efficacious in this respect *; and probably they produce as good effects as the fasting on St. Agnes Day, a custom which originated in a pretended miracle that occurred to the parents of the saint when lamenting at her tomb; or as that of depositing the first out of the cheese at a lying-in, called "the groaning cheese," under the pillow, which was supposed to cause lovers to dream of the objects of their affection, a practice sow remembered only in the politer superstition of the bride cake.

* Bacon, vol. iii. p. 195.

There is a connexion in all these follies, and those who yield to the impressions excited by dreams, may soon be led to hang up, agreeably to ancient custom in the North, holy shoes in stables to counteract the malevolence of the night-mare; or in the same bias of reflection to watch with solicitude the favillous particles of a snuff of candle, the filmy appendage of the grate, or the bouncing coffin from the fire: to regard with anxiety the spilling of salt, or the position of the knives and forks: despising such trifles, the enlightened mind will learn,

"Not with perplexing thoughts To interrupt the sweet of life, from which God hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares. And not molest us, unless we ourselves Seek them with wand'ring thoughts and notions vain. But apt the mind in fancy is to rove Unchecked, and of her roving is ho end, Till warn'd, or by experience, she learn That not to know at large of things remote

From use, obscure and subtle, but to know That which before us lies in daily life, la the prime wisdom, what is more is fame Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, And renders us in tilings that most concern, Unpractis'd, unprepar'd, and still to seek *."

Dreams are considered in Scripture as the vaiuest of shadows, and human life, in its fleeting and empty pursuits, is exhibited in its vainest shew when compared to a dream.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made of; A little life is ended with a sleep †."

* Paradise Lost. † Tempest.