Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] We hold, then, that dreams are for the most part inflicted by demons — even if sometimes true and welcome, yet, as we said, pursued and courted out of that same design — how much more so the empty, deceptive, troubled, mocking, and unclean ones. No wonder, since the images belong to those whose business they are. [2] But from God — who has pledged that the Holy Spirit's grace would be poured out upon all flesh, and that his male and female servants would not merely prophesy but also see dreams — those dreams will be reckoned which are matched to that same grace: whatever is honorable, holy, prophetic, revelatory, edifying, calling — the generosity of which is wont to drip down even on the profane, God equalizing his rains and his suns upon the just and the unjust alike, since even Nebuchadnezzar dreamed by divine gift, and nearly the greater part of mankind learns of God through visions. So then, just as God condescends even toward the heathen, so too the temptation of the evil one reaches even the saints, from whom it does not withdraw even by day, so that it may creep up on them at least while sleeping, by whatever way it can, if it cannot while they wake. [3] A third kind will be those dreams which the soul seems to produce for itself out of the intensity of its circumstances. Yet since dreaming is not a matter of choice (for Epicharmus too holds this view), how could the soul be the cause of some vision to itself? Must this kind, then, be left to natural form, on the ground that the soul, even in ecstasy, keeps enduring its own concerns? [4] But whatever seems to happen neither from God nor from a demon nor from the soul, and falls outside opinion, outside interpretation, outside the power of narration — these will be assigned properly to ecstasy itself and to its own logic.