Combustible, may by being associated together, and by the help of the
Fire, afford an inflamable Substance. And that on the other side, 'tis
possible for a Body to be inflamable, from which it would very much
puzzle any ordinary Chymist; and perhaps any other, to separate an
inflamable Principle or Ingredient. Wherefore, since the Principles of
Chymists may receive their Denominations from Qualities, which it
often exceeds not the power of Art, nor alwayes that of the Fire to
produce; And since such Qualities may be found in Bodies that differ
so much in other Qualities from one another, that they need not be
allow'd to agree in that pure and simple Nature, which Principles, to
be so indeed, must have; it may justly be suspected, that many
Productions of the Fire that are shew'd us by Chymists, as the
Principles of the Concrete that afforded them, may be but a new kind
of Mixts. And to annex, on this Occasion, to these arguments taken
from the Nature of the thing, one of those which _Logicians_ call _ad
Hominem_, I shall desire You to take Notice, that though _Paracelsus_
Himself, and some that are so mistaken as to think he could not be so,
have ventur'd to teach, that not only the bodies here below, but the
Elements themselves, and all the other Parts of the Universe, are
compos'd of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury; yet the learned _Sennertus_,
and all the more wary Chymists, have rejected that conceit, and do
many of them confess, that the _Tria Prima_ are each of them made up
of the four Elements; and others of them make Earth and Water concur
with Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, to the Constitution of Mixt bodies. So
that one sort of these _Spagyrists_, notwithstanding the specious
Titles they give to the productions of the Fire, do in effect grant
what I contend for. And, of the other sort I may well demand, to what
Kind of Bodies the Phlegme and dead Earth, to be met with in Chymical
Resolutions, are to be referr'd? For either they must say, with
_Paracelsus_, but against their own Concessions as well as against
Experience, that these are also compos'd of the _Tria Prima_, whereof
they cannot separate any one from either of them; or else they must
confess that two of the vastest Bodies here below, Earth, and Water,
are neither of them compos'd of the _Tria Prima_; and that
consequently those three are not the Universal, and Adequate
Ingredients, neither of all Sublunary Bodies, nor even of all mixt
Bodies.
[Footnote 17: _Ostendi alias, quomodo lib. una aquae vitae combibita in
sale Tartari siccato, vix fiat semuncia salis, caeterum totum corpus
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