found. Attention has frequently been called to his shrewdness in explaining why, when he claimed to hear the voices of angels, those who stood by could not, by his declaring that he was accustomed to see and hear angels when perfectly wide awake, and adding: "The speech of an angel or of a spirit sounds like and as loud as that of a man, but it is not heard by the bystanders. The reason is that the speech of an angel, or of a spirit, finds entrance first into a man's thoughts, and reaches his organs of hearing from within." It is necessary only to read his literal statements to perceive the subjective character of the visions. He gives detailed accounts of the habits, form, and dress of the angels. He sends his opponents mostly to Gehenna and sees them there. The chief representatives of the reformed churches go to heaven, but Catholics and some of his Protestant opponents he sees in vision elsewhere.
Visions and hallucinations of men of this class are quoted against each other in the ecclesiastical conflicts of the middle ages, and more lately, as proofs of the doctrines held by them. But as proofs they are mutually destructive, exist in all religions, true or false, and are liable to occur apart from religion. In the revivals which occurred in the early part of this century in the United States, and which sometimes take place now, visions are not infrequently connected with religious experience. When men pray without attending to the necessary cares of the body days and weeks together, the result is faintings and trances accompanied by visions. Where they are believed to be of divine origin they produce profound impressions, but there is no reason to think their cause different from those already discussed, nor have unbelievers in Christianity always escaped them.
