ANTHONY: Have you never dreamed ere this that you have done the same?
VINCENT: Yes, that have I, and more too than that. For I have ere this in my sleep dreamed that I doubted whether I were asleep or awake, and have in good faith thought that I did thereupon even the same things that I do now indeed, and thereby determined that I was not asleep. And yet have I dreamed in good faith further, that I have been afterward at dinner and there, making merry with good company, have told the same dream at the table and laughed well at it, to think that while I was asleep I had by such means of moving the parts of my body and considering thereof, so verily thought myself awake!
ANTHONY: And will you not now soon, think you, when you wake and rise, laugh as well at yourself when you see that you lie now in your warm bed asleep again, and dream all this time, while you believe so verily that you are awake and talking of these matters with me?
VINCENT: God's Lord, uncle, you go now merrily to work with me indeed, when you look and speak so seriously and would make me think I were asleep!
ANTHONY: It may be that you are, for anything that you can say or do whereby you can, with any reason that you make, drive me to confess that you yourself be sure of the contrary. For you cannot do or say anything now whereby you are sure to be awake but what you have ere this, or hereafter may, think yourself as surely to do the selfsame thing indeed while you be all the while asleep and do nothing but lie dreaming.
VINCENT: Well, well, uncle, though I have ere this thought myself awake while I was indeed asleep, yet for all this I know well enough that I am awake now. And so do you too, though I cannot find the words by which I may with reason force you to confess it, without your always driving me off by the example of my dream.
ANTHONY: Meseemeth, cousin, this is very true. And likewise meseemeth the manner and difference between some kind of true revelations and some kind of false illusions is like that which standeth between the things that are done awake and the things that in our dreams seem to be done when we are sleeping. That is, he who hath that kind of revelation from God is as sure of the truth as we are of our own deeds while we are awake. And he who is deluded by the devil is in such wise deceived as they are by their dream, and worse, too. And yet he reckoneth himself for the time as sure as the other, saving that one believeth falsely, the other truly knoweth. But I say not, cousin, that this kind of sure knowledge cometh in every kind of revelation. For there are many kinds, of which it would be too long to talk now. But I say that God doth certainly send some such to a man in some thing, or may.
VINCENT: Yet then this religious man of whom we speak, when I show him the scripture against his revelation and therefore call it an illusion, may bid me with reason go mind my own affairs. For he knoweth well and surely himself that his revelation is very good and true and not any false illusion, since for all the general commandment of God in the scripture, God may dispense where he will and when he will, and may command him to do the contrary. For he commanded Abraham to kill his own son, and Sampson had, by inspiration of God, commandment to kill himself by pulling down the house upon his own head at the feast of the Philistines.
Now, if I would then do as you bade me right now, tell him that such apparitions may be illusions, and since God's word is in the scripture against him plain for the prohibition, he must perceive the truth of his revelation whereby I may know it is not a false illusion; then shall he in turn bid me tell him whereby I can prove myself to be awake and talk with him and not be asleep and dream so, since in my dream I may as surely think so as I know that I do so. And thus shall he drive me to the same bay to which I would bring him.
ANTHONY: This is well said, cousin, but yet could he not escape you so. For the dispensation of God's common precept, which dispensation he must say that he hath by his private revelation, is a thing of such sort as showeth itself naught and false. For it never hath any example like, since the world began until now, that ever man hath read or heard of, among faithful people commended.