brought to light by whatever we have been seeing in dreams and other forms of "spiritual
480 The Literal Meaning of Genesis gious opinion.26 Accordingly, even when the devil deceives people with bodily visions, it does them no harm that he is playing tricks on their eyes, ifthey do not go astray over the truth of faith and sound understanding, which27 God teaches to those who submit themselves to him. Or if he plays tricks on the soul by the images of bodies in spiritual vision, so that it takes something to be a real body that in fact is not, this does no harm to the soul, provided it does not yield to his pernicious persuasiveness.
The question of wet dreams
15, 31. ln this connection the question is sometimes raised about the consent given by people in a dream, when they seem to themselves to be copulating, either against their own resolution or even against lawful morals. This only happens when things which we also think about while awake, not with pleasur able consent, but as required in order to talk about such matters for some reason or other, when these things are brought to our notice in dreams and expressed in such a way that the flesh is of its nature moved by them, and emits through the genital channels what by nature it has stored up. Thus I would of course be unable to say this unless I was also thinking about it. Then if the images of the bodily realities, which l have been thinking about in order to say all this, were displayed to me as vividly in a dream as the actual bodies are displayed to people when awake, I would find myselfdoing that which could not be done without sin if I were awake.
Could anybody, after all, not think about what he is saying when some neces sity of a sermon or conversation requires him to talk about his sexual activity? Well, when the mental pictures that occur in his thoughts while he is speaking are also imprinted on his vision while he is dreaming in such a way that he cannot distinguish between them and the real coupling of bodies, the flesh is at once stirred into movement, and the result is what usually follows upon this move ment; and this happens without sin, just as when he was awake he said without sin what he undoubtedly thought about in order to say it.
However, a well-disposed soul, purified by better desires, slays many crav ings which have nothing to do with this natural movement of the flesh; which chaste people keep on a tight rein while awake, but cannot do so while asleep.
26. This qualification seems to be somewhat out of place here; presumably if these faults are being brought to light by whatever we have been seeing in dreams and other forms of "spiritual vision," then what we have been seeing has been "true"; or at least our "intellectual vision" of its meaning is true. 1n any case, what we would now be repenting of is the infidelity and false opinions our dreams etc. are convicting us of, not the unreality of the dreams themselves. 27. Reading quam with one manuscript, instead of tbequae of the CSEL text (which is non-construable). or the qua of the Maurists, which would yield the sense, "by which God teaches. . ."