And then the blasphemy of that convocation, summoned in the reign of Mary Tudor, to renew the discussion on that sacred point of transubstantiation, between the Protestants and the Romanists;—but I leave this topic to the mild theologian, who will confess it would have withheld a stain from the page of history, had these mock religionists acknowledged, with the pious Pascal, that “the sublime truths of our religion and the essence of the immortal spirit are inexplicable by the deepest research of wisdom, and are unfolded only by the inspired light of revelation.”
Now it was clear that the dreams of the classic poets were not _all_ truly prophetic; and in accordance with this are their delineations of the house of sleep. Indeed we may almost fancy, for a moment, that there might be some reality in these poetical surveyors, until we reflect that the Roman notions were plagiaries from the Greeks.
It is true, the locality of this Palace of Somnus, like the site of Troy, is not a little diversified by Homer and the rest; but, whether it be Lemnos, or Æthiopia, or Cimmeria, these are its descriptions:
“Immur’d within the silent bower of sleep, Two portals firm the various phantoms keep: Of iv’ry one, whence flit, to mock the brain, Of winged lies a light fantastic train. The gate oppos’d, pellucid valves adorn, And columns fair incased with polish’d horn; Where images of truth for passage wait, With visions manifest of future fate.”
In the “City of Dreams,” of Lucian, the blasphemer (whose beauties are stained by their impieties), these eternal gates are again alluded to. But the dreams in this city are all deceivers; for when a mortal enters the gates, a circle of domestic dreams in a moment unfold to him a budget of intelligence, which proves to be a tissue of lies.
Tertullian, and many others, have argued the notion of a _special purpose_ of the Deity in _every dream_. And the “New Moral World” of the visionary Owen, asserts, that “one chief source of our knowledge is dreams and omens.”
In the eras of inspiration, few will be sceptical enough to doubt the occurrence of divine mediations; or not to believe, with Socrates, and other sages, in the divine origin of dreams and omens.