The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
ourselves with an obstinate denial of the faith or with vain and sacrilegious opinions. So also when the Devil deceives us with corporeal visions, no harm is done by the fact that he has played tricks with our eyes, so long as we do not deviate from the true faith or lose the integrity of intelligence, by which'® God instructs those who are obedient to Him. Or if the Devil should cozen the soul with a spiritual vision by means of the images of bodies, leading it to think there is a body where there is none, no harm is done the soul if it does not consent to an evil suggestion.
CHAPTER 15
Impure dreams not culpable.
31. And hence a question sometimes arises about consent given in sleep when people dream even of having carnal intercourse contrary to their previous good resolutions as well as against what is lawful. This does not happen except when there come into our dreams objects of which we also thought in our waking hours (not consenting to pleasure in them but thinking of them, as when for some reason we speak of such things), and in our sleep there appear images which naturally move the flesh. Then what nature has gathered together it discharges through the organs of generation—a fact that I could not mention without also thinking of it.
Now if the images of these corporeal things, which I have necessarily thought of in order to say what I have said, were to appear in sleep as vividly as do real bodies to those who are awake, there would follow that which in waking hours could not happen without sin. For who, at least when speaking of this matter and by the necessity of the subject saying something about carnal intercourse he has had, is able to refrain from thinking about the subject of which he is speaking? Moreover, when the image'! that arises in the thoughts of the speaker becomes so vivid in the dream of the sleeper that it is indjstinguishable from actual intercourse, it immediately moves the