of Elementary fire. Nor will they let the Peripateticks call Ashes, or
Quicklime, Earth, notwithstanding the many likenesses between them;
because they are not tastlesse, as Elementary Earth ought to be: But
if you should ask me, what then it is, that all the Chymical Anatomies
of Bodies do prove, if they prove not that they consist of the three
Principles into which the fire resolves them? I answer, that their
Dissections may be granted to prove, that some mixt bodies (for in
many it will not hold) are by the fire, when they are included in
close Vessels, (for that Condition also is often requisite) dissolube
[Transcriber's Note: dissoluble] into several Substances differing in
some Qualities, but principally in Consistence. So that out of most of
them may be obtain'd a fixt substance partly saline, and partly
insipid, an unctuous Liquor, and another Liquor or more that without
being unctuous have a manifest taste. Now if Chymists will agree to
call the dry and sapid substance salt, the Unctous liquor Sulphur, and
the other Mercury, I shall not much quarrel with them for so doing:
But if they will tell me that Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury, are simple
and primary bodies whereof each mixt body was actually compounded, and
which was really in it antecedently to the operation of the fire, they
must give me leave to doubt whether (whatever their other arguments
may do) their Experiments prove all this. And if they will also tell
me that the Substances their Anatomies are wont to afford them, are
pure and similar, as Principles ought to be, they must give me leave
to believe my own senses; and their own confessions, before their bare
Assertions. And that you may not (_Eleutherius_) think I deal so
rigidly with them, because I scruple to Take these Productions of the
Fire for such as the Chymists would have them pass for, upon the
account of their having some affinity with them; consider a little
with me, that in regard an Element or Principle ought to be perfectly
Similar and Homogeneous, there is no just cause why I should rather
give the body propos'd the Name of this or that Element or Principle,
because it has a resemblance to it in some obvious Quality, rather
then deny it that name upon the account of divers other Qualities,
wherein the propos'd Bodies are unlike; and if you do but consider
what sleight and easily producible qualities they are that suffice, as
I have already more then once observ'd, to Denominate a Chymical
Principle or an Element, you'l not, I hope, think my wariness to be
destitute either of Example, or else of Reason. For we see that the
Chymists will not allow the _Aristotelians_ that the Salt in Ashes
ought to be called Earth, though the Saline and Terrestrial part
116