Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe With His Vision of the Angelick World

SERIOUS REFLECTIONS DURING THE LIFE...

But still, then, I was answered with my own thoughts returning thus — What could it be? Or, if it was not a devil, what was it? This I could not answer by any means at all; and so I still sunk under the belief that it was the devil, and nothing but the devil.

You may be sure, while I had this fancy in my head, I was of course overrun with the vapours, and had all the hypochondriac fancies that ever any melancholy head could entertain; and what with ruminating on the print of a foot upon the sand, and the weight of the devil upon me in my bed, I made no difficulty to conclude that the old gentleman really visited the place; and, in a word, it had been easy to have possessed me, if I had continued so much longer, that it was an enchanted island, that there were a million of evil spirits in it, and that the devil was lord of the manor.

I scarce heard the least noise, near or far off, but I started, and expected to see a devil; every distant bush upon a hill, if I did not particularly remember it before, was a man, and every stump an apparition; and I scarce went twenty yards together, by night or by day, without looking behind me.

Sometimes, indeed, I took a little heart, and would say, “Well, let it be the devil if it will! God is master of the devil, and he can do me no hurt unless he is permitted; he can be nowhere but He that made him is there too;” and, as I said afterwards, when I was frighted with the old goat in a cave, “He

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is not fit to live all alone in such an island for twenty years that would be afraid to see the devil.”

But all these things lasted but a short while, and the vapours that were raised at first were not to be so easily laid; for, in a word, it was not mere imagination, but it was the imagination raised up to disease; nor did it ever quite wear off till I got my man Friday with me, of whom I have said so much; and then, having company to talk to, the hypo wore off, and I did not see any more devils after that.

Before I leave this part, I cannot but give a caution to all vapourish, melancholy people, whose imaginations run this way; I mean about seeing the devil, apparitions, and the like; namely, that they should never look behind them, and over their shoulders, as they go upstairs, or look into the corners and holes of rooms with a candle in their hands, or turn about to see who may be behind them in any walks or dark fields, lanes, or the like; for let such know, they will see the devil whether he be there or no; nay, they will be so persuaded that they do see him, that their very imagination will be a devil to them wherever they go.

But after all this is said, let nobody suggest that because the brain-sick fancy, the vapourish hypochondriac imagination represents spectres and spirits to us, and makes apparitions for us, that therefore there are no such things as spirits, both good and evil, any more than we should conceive that there is no devil, because we do not see him.

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SERIOUS REFLECTIONS DURING THE LIFE...

The devil has witnesses of his being and nature, just as God Himself has of His; they are not indeed so visible or so numerous, but we are all able to bring evidence of the existence of the devil from our own frailties, as we are to bring evidence of the existence of God from the faculties of our souls, and from the contexture of our bodies.

As our propensity to evil rather than good is a testimony of the original depravity of human nature, so the harmony between the inclination and the occasion is a testimony which leaves the presence of the evil spirit with us out of question.

Not that the devil is always the agent in our temptations, for though the devil is a very diligent fellow, and always appears ready to fall in with the allurement, yet the Scripture clears him, and we must do so too, of being the main tempter; ‘tis our own corrupt, debauched inclination, which is the first moving agent; and therefore the Scripture says, “A man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lusts, and enticed.” The devil, who, as I said, is a very diligent fellow in the infernal work, and is always ready to forward the mischief, is also a very cunning fellow, and knows how most dexterously to suit alluring thing; these are not the spirits I am speaking of, but I shall come directly to what I mean, and speak plain without any possibility of being misunderstood.

I make no question but that there is not only a world of spirits, but that there is a certain knowledge of it, though to us impossible as to the manner of it; there is a certain converse between the world of spirits, and the spirits in this world; that

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is to say, between spirits uncased or unembodied and souls of men embodied or cased up in flesh and blood, as we all are on this side death.

It is true that we cannot describe this converse of spirits, as to the way of it, the manner of the communication, or how things are mutually conveyed from one to another. How intelligences are given or received, we know not; we know but little of their being conveyed this way from the spirits unembodied to ours that are in life; and of their being conveyed that way, namely, from us to them — of that we know nothing. The latter certainly is done without the help of the organ, the former is conveyed by the understanding, and the retired faculties of the soul, of which we can give very little account.

“For spirits, without the help of voice, converse.” Let me, however, give, as reasons for my opinion, some account of the consequences of this converse of spirits; I mean, such as are quite remote from what we call apparition or appearance of spirits; and I omit these, because I know they are objected much against, and they bear much scandal from the frequent impositions of our fancies and imaginations upon our judgments and understandings, as above.

But the more particular discoveries of this converse of spirits, and which to me are undeniable, are such as follows, namely, — objects to the allurable dispositions; to procure ensnaring things, and lay them in the way of the man whom he finds so easily to be ensnared; and he never fails to prompt all the mischief he can, full of stratagem and art, to ensnare

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Dreams Voices Noises Impulses Hints Apprehensions

Involuntary sadness, &c. us by the help of our corrupt affections, and these are called “Satan’s devices.”

But having charged Satan home in that part, I must do the devil that justice as to own that he is the most slandered, most abused creature alive; thousands of crimes we lay to his charge that he is not guilty of; thousands of our own infirmities we load him with which he has no hand in; and thousands of our sins which, as bad as he is, he knows nothing of; calling him our tempter, and pretending we did so and so as the devil would have it, when on the contrary the devil had no share in it, and we were only led away of our own lusts, and enticed.

But now, having made this digression in the devil’s defence, I return to the main question, that of the being of the devil, and of evil spirits; this I believe, there is no room to doubt of; but this, as I have observed, is not the

Dreams are dangerous things to talk of; and we have such dreaming about them, that indeed the least encouragement to lay any weight upon them is presently carried away by a sort of people that dream waking, and that run into such wild extremes about them, that indeed we ought to be very cautious what we say of them.

It is certain dreams of old were the ways by which God Himself was pleased to warn men, as well what to do, as what not to do; what services to perform, what evils to shun. Joseph, the

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husband of the blessed Virgin Mary, was appeared to in both these (Matt. ii. 13, 19). He was directed of God, in a dream, to go into Egypt; and he was bid return out of Egypt in a dream; and in the same chapter, the wise men of the East were warned of God in a dream to depart into their own country another way to avoid the fury of Herod.

Now as this, and innumerable instances through the whole

Scripture, confirm that God did once make use of this manner to convey knowledge and instruction to men, I wish I could have this question well answered, viz., Why are we now to direct people to take no notice of their dreams?

But farther; it appears that this was not only the method God Himself took by His immediate power, but it is evident He made use of it by the ministry of spirits; the Scripture says in both the cases of Joseph above named, that the “angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.” Now every unembodied spirit is an angel of the Lord in some sense; and as angels and spirits may be the same thing in respect of this influence upon us in dreams, so it is still; and when any notice for good, or warning against evil, is given us in a dream, I think ‘tis no arrogance at all for us to say the angel of the Lord appeared to us in a dream; or to say some good spirit gave me warning of this in a dream; — take this which way you will.

That I may support this with such undeniable arguments, drawn from examples of the fact, as no man will, or reason-

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ably can oppose, I first appeal to the experience of observing people; I mean, such people as observe these things without a superstitious dependence upon the signification of them, that look upon dreams but with such a moderate regard to them as may direct to a right use of them. The question I would ask of such is, whether they have never found any remarkable event of their lives so evidently fore-told them by a dream, as that it must of necessity be true that some invisible being foresaw the event, and gave them notice of it? And that, had that notice been listened to, and the natural prudence used which would have been used if it had been certainly discovered, that evil event might have been prevented?

I would ask others whether they have not, by dreams, been so warned of evil really approaching, as that, taking the hint, and making use of the caution given in those dreams, the evil has been avoided? If I may speak my own experience, I must take leave to say, that I never had any capital mischief befall me in my life but I have had notice of it by a dream; and if I had not been that thoughtless, unbelieving creature, which I now would caution other people against, I might have taken many a warning, and avoided many of the evils that I afterwards fell into merely by a total obstinate neglect of those dreams.

In like manner I have in some of the greatest distresses of my life been encouraged to believe firmly and fully that I should one time or other be delivered; and I must acknowledge, that in my greatest and most hopeless banishment I had such frequent dreams of deliverance, that I always entertained

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a firm and satisfying belief that my last days would be better than my first; all which has effectually come to pass.

From which I cannot determine, as I know some do, that all dreams are mere dozings of a delirious head, delusions of a waking devil, and relics of the day’s thoughts and perplexities, or pleasures. Nor do I see any period of time fixed between the two opposite circumstances — namely, when dreams were to be esteemed the voice of God and when the delusion of the devil.

I know some have struggled hard to fix that particular article, and to settle it as a thing going hand in hand with the Jewish institutions; as if the oracle ceasing in the temple with the consummation of the typical law, all the methods which Heaven was pleased to take in the former times for revealing His will to men were to cease also at the same time, and the Gospel revelation being fully and effectually supplied by the mission of the Holy Spirit, dreams and all the uses and significations of dreams were at an end, and the esteem and regard to the warnings and instructions of dreams was to expire also.

But the Scripture is point-blank against this in the history of fact relating to Ananias and the conversion of St Paul, and in the story of St Peter and Cornelius, the devout centurion at Antioch; both of them eminent instances of God’s giving notice of His pleasure to men by the interposition or medium of a dream. The first of these is in Acts ix. 10: “There was a certain disciple at Damascus named Anania. To him said the Lord in a vision,” &c.; the words spoken in this vision to Ananias, direct-

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ing to go to seek out one Saul of Tarsus, go on thus (ver. 12), “and hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in.”

The other passage is of St Peter and Cornelius the centurion (Acts x. vers. 3, 10, 11). In the third verse it is said, Cornelius, fasting and praying, saw a vision, which afterwards, in the 22nd verse, is called an holy angel warning him; in the 30th verse it is said, “a man stood before me in bright clothing;” at the same time (ver. 10) it is said, St Peter was praying and fell into a trance — this we all agree to be a possession of sleep, or a deep sleep — and in this trance it is said he saw heaven opened; that is to say, he dreamed that he saw heaven opened; it could be nothing else, for no interpreters will offer to insist that heaven was really opened; also, the hearing a voice (vers. 13, 15) must be in a dream. Thus ‘tis apparent the will of God concerning what we are to do or not to do, what is or is not to befall us, is and has been thus conveyed by vision or dream since the expiration of the Levitical dispensation, and since the mission of the Holy Ghost.

When, then, did it cease? And if we do not know when it ceased, how then are we sure it is at all ceased, and what authority have we now to reject all dreams or visions of the night, as they are called, more than formerly?

I will not say but there may be more nocturnal delusions now in the world than there were in those times; and perhaps the devil may have gained more upon mankind in these days than he had then, though we are not let into those things

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enough to know whether it is so or not; nor do we know that there were not as many unsignifying dreams in those days as now, and perhaps as much to be said against depending upon them; though I think there is not one word in Scripture said to take off the regard men might give to dreams, or to lessen the weight which they might lay on them.

The only text that I think looks like it is the flout Joseph’s brethren put upon him, or threw out at him, when they were speaking of him with contempt•(Gen. xxxvii. 19), “Behold, this dreamer cometh;” and again (ver. 20), “Let us slay him and cast him into some pit, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”

This, indeed, looks a little like the present language against dreams; but even this is sufficiently rebuked in the consequences, for those dreams of Joseph did come all to pass, and proving the superior influence such things have upon the affairs of men, in spite of all the contempt they can cast upon them.

The maxim I have laid down to myself for my conduct in this affair is, in few words, that we should not lay too great stress upon dreams, and yet not wholly neglect them.

I remember I was once present where a long dispute was warmly carried on between two persons of my acquaintance upon this very subject, the one a layman, the other a clergyman, but both very pious and religious persons. The first thought there was no heed at all to be given to dreams, that they could have

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