rigorous aspect testifying to the displeasure occasioned by her conduct."
There were great differences of opinion as to the source of her visions. Several very learned priests and confessors judged her to be deluded by the devil. One of them instructed her to make the sign of the cross, and to insult the vision as that of a fiend. In one of her visions, according to her statement, the Lord appeared angry at her instructions, and bade her tell them it was tyranny. She acknowledged that she frequently saw devils in hideous figures, but she drove them away by the cross or by holy water. She also claimed to see St. Joseph, the blessed Virgin, and other saints; had visions of purgatory, and saw a great number of souls in heaven who had been there.
There is no difficulty in explaining her visions on natural principles. She was a religious woman, in such a state of health as to be subject to trances, and they took their character from her conventual and other religious instruction. Visions of this kind have been common in the excitable of all sects. The early Methodists had many of them, which Mr. Wesley could not understand; and he expelled some persons from the society because they persisted against his commands in narrating visions which even he could not accept as of divine origin.
Luther suffered from hallucinations of a religious character for a considerable period of his life. The opposition he encountered and his sedentary life, taken in connection with the extraordinary powers attributed to Satan in the middle ages, fully explain his visions. Luther thought that the devil removed a bag of nuts, transformed himself into a fly, hung on his neck, and lay with him in bed. His visions would sometimes come on after nightmare. Here is his own account: "I awoke in the middle of the night. Satan
