Adamic Magic, or the Antiquity of Magic

often stirs up, puzzles, and helps our Reason; so often solicits her when she is restless, so often when she is watchful, and this by strange means, not casual and adventitious, but by genuine provocations and pleasures of nature; All which Motions being not to no purpose, it falls out at last that in some good time we attain to the
and yet you know nothing compared to what we actually attain

true Knowledge of those things that are.

But because I would not have you build your Philosophie on Coralls and whistles In the 17th century, corals and whistles were common toys or teething objects given to infants; the author uses them here as a metaphor for superficial or trivial intellectual pursuits., which are the Objects of little Children, of whom we have spoken formerly, I will speak somewhat of those Elements, in whose Contemplation a Man ought to employ himself, and this Discourse may serve as a Preface to our whole Philosophie.

Man according to Trismegistus Referring to Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary figure to whom the Hermetic corpus—a series of influential philosophical and alchemical texts—is attributed. has but two Elements in his power, namely Earth and Water: To which Doctrine I add this, and I have it from a Greater than Hermes A likely reference to the authority of the Christian Bible or God, positioning divine revelation above ancient Hermetic wisdom., That God hath made Man absolute