Part 615

_Direct._ VII. Lay no greater stress upon your dreams than there is just cause. As, 1. When you have searched, and find no such sin prevailing in you as your dreams seem to intimate, do not conclude that you have more than your waking evidence discovers. Prefer not your sleeping signs before your waking signs and search. 2. When you are conscious that you indulge no corruption to occasion such a dream, suppose it not to be faulty of itself, and lay not the blame of your bodily temperament, or unknown causes, upon your soul, with too heavy and unjust a charge. 3. Abhor the presumptuous folly of those that use to prognosticate by their dreams, and measure their expectations by them, and cast themselves into hopes or fears by them. Saith Diogenes, "What folly is it to be careless of your waking thoughts and actions, and inquisitive about your dreams? A man's happiness or misery lieth upon what he doth when he is awake, and not upon what he suffereth in his sleep."