This is my advice but how welcome to thee I know not. - Thomas Vaughan

To the end we might live well, and exercise our charities which was wanting in neither of us, to our power: I employed my self all her life time in the Acquisition of some naturall secrets, to which I had been disposed from my youth up: and what I now write, and know of them practically, I attained to in her Dayes, not before in very truth, nor after: but during the time wee lived together at the Pinner of Wakefield, and though I brought them not to perfection in those deare Dayes, yet were the Gates opened to mee then, and what I have done since, is but the effect of those principles. I found them not by my owne witt, or labour, but by God's blessing, and the Incouragement I received from a most loving, obedient wife, whom I beseech God to reward in Heaven, for all the Happiness and Content shee afforded mee. I shall lay them down here in their order, protesting earnestly, and with a good Conscience, that they are the very truth, and here I leave them for his use and Benefit, to whom God in his providence shall direct them. xii Biographical Preface

It happened in exposing my former discourse to censure, (a custom hath strangled many truths in the cradle) that a learned man suggested to me some bad opinion he had of my author, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa. I ever understood it was not one but many in whose sentiment that miracle suffered.

Bless'd souls, whose care it was this first to know
And thus the mansions of the light attain:
How credible to hold that minds like these Transcend both human littleness and vice.
If Thou, O Jehovah, my God, wilt enlighten me, darkness shall be made light. p.56