so specially participant of Christ’s passion that he shall forthwith be carried up with angels into heaven.  And that he is so joyful for this that he firmly purposeth upon it, no less glad to do it than another man would be glad to avoid it.  And therefore may you desire his good counsel to instruct you with some substantial good advice, with which you may turn him from this error, that he be not, under hope of God’s true revelation, destroyed in body and soul by the devil’s false illusion.

If he will in this thing study and labour to instruct you, the things that he himself shall find, of his own invention, though they be less effectual, shall peradventure more work with him toward his own amendment (since he shall, of likelihood, better like them) than shall things double so substantial that were told him by another man.  If he be loth to think upon that side, and therefore shrink from the matter, then is there no other way but to venture to fall into the matter after the plain fashion, and tell what you hear, and give him counsel and exhortation to the contrary.  Unless you wish to say that thus and thus hath the matter been reasoned already between your friend and you.  And therein may you rehearse such things as should prove that the vision which moveth him is no true revelation, but a very false illusion.

Vincent:  Verily, uncle, I well allow that a man should, in this thing as well as in every other in which he longeth to do another man good, seek such a pleasant way that the party should be likely to like his communication, or at least to take it well in worth.  And he should not enter in unto it in such a way that he whom he would help should abhor him and be loth to hear him, and therefore take no profit by him.

But now, uncle, if it come, by the one way or the other, to the point where he will or shall hear me; what be the effectual means with which I should by my counsel convert him?

Anthony:  All those by which you may make him perceive that he is deceived, and that his visions are no godly revelations but very devilish illusion.  And those reasons must you gather of the man, of the matter, and of the law of God, or of some one of these.

Of the man may you gather them, if you can peradventure show him that in such-and-such a point he is waxed worse since such revelations have haunted him than he was before—­as, in those who are deluded, whosoever be well acquainted with them shall well mark and perceive.  For they wax more proud, more wayward, more envious, suspicious, misjudging and depraving other men, with the delight of their own praise, and such other spiritual vices of the soul.

Of the matter may you gather, if it has happened that his revelations before have proved false, or if they be strange things rather than profitable ones.  For that is a good mark between God’s miracles and the devil’s wonders.  For Christ and his saints have their miracles always tending to fruit and profit.  The devil and his witches and necromancers, all their wonderful works tend to no fruitful end, but to a fruitless ostentation and show, as it were a juggler who would for a show before the people play feats of skill at a feast.