Publisher's Synopsis
Before I come to the main end of this undertaking, which is plainly laid down in my title, it is necessary to explain the terms, and to determine fully what is and is not to be understood by Magic, the Black Art, and such-like hard words as we shall be obliged to make frequent use of as we go along. I am willing to suppose my readers not so unacquainted with the ancient usage, as not to know that the word magic had a quite different signification in former times, from what it is now applied to; and that the people who studied or professed that which we now call 'magic, ' were quite another sort of folk, than those worthy gentlemen who now apply themselves to that profession. In a word, a magician was no more or less in the ancient Chaldean times, than a mathematician, a man of science, who, stored with knowledge and learning, as learning went in those days, was a kind of walking dictionary to other people, and instructed the rest of mankind in any niceties and difficulties which occurred to them, and which they wanted to be informed about; and in this sense we are to be understood when we speak of the magicians in Egypt, in Persia, in Babylon, &c.
