The Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged (1678) - Page 19

6 OF AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR
...I make you more certain, and that I myself know this very thing, and that nothing is more in my wishes than to silently enjoy your familiarity; for which reason I also wished to publish this little treatise.

But if anyone wishes to complain about the difficulty of this art, let him be certainly persuaded that it will not be difficult in and of itself, indeed, that it is very easy for those who love God and have been deemed worthy of this knowledge by Him. But if anyone presumes to accuse me because I have brought forth its artifice too clearly and openly into the public, so that even anyone might attain knowledge of it; let him receive this answer from me, that I have indeed described it clearly enough for the worthy and those predestined by God, but that the unworthy will not gain even the slightest benefit from it. To some sharp-nosed and overly wise individuals I have more than once declared all this art word for word, but laughing with a haughty brow, they did not believe me, that there is a double resurrection of the dead in our work. Wherefore this art of ours, both in theory and in practice, is a mere gift of God, who bestows it upon whom and when He wills, and it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God alone who shows mercy. With all its circumstances and initiation, I have known it abundantly for seventeen or eighteen years, yet I had to wait for that time,