Fire, endow'd with new Qualities, more differing from them it had
before, then are those which suffice to discriminate the Chymists
Principles from one another.
We are next to Consider, whether in the Anatomy of mixt Bodies, that
which Chymists call the Mercurial part of them be un-compounded, or
no. But to tell You True, though Chymists do Unanimously affirm that
their Resolutions discover a Principle, which they call Mercury, yet I
find them to give of it Descriptions so Differing, and so
AEnigmaticall, that I, who am not asham'd to confess that I cannot
understand what is not sence, must acknowledge to you that I know not
what to make of them. _Paracelsus_ himself, and therefore, as you
will easily believe, many of his Followers, does somewhere call that
Mercury which ascends upon the burning of Wood, as the Peripateticks
are wont to take the same smoke for Air; and so seems to define
Mercury by Volatility, or (if I may coyne such a Word) Effumability.
But since, in this Example, both Volatile Salt and Sulphur make part
of the smoke, which does indeed consist also both of Phlegmatick and
Terrene Corpuscles, this Notion is not to be admitted; And I find that
the more sober Chymists themselves disavow it. Yet to shew you how
little of clearness we are to expect in the accounts even of latter
_Spagyrists_, be pleas'd to take notice, that _Beguinus_, even in his
_Tyrocinium Chymicum_,[20] written for the Instruction of Novices,
when he comes to tell us what are meant by the _Tria Prima_, which for
their being Principles ought to be defin'd the more accurately and
plainly, gives us this Description of Mercury; _Mercurius_ (sayes he)
_est liquor ille acidus, permeabilis, penetrabilis, aethereus, ac
purissimus, a quo omnis Nutricatio, Sensus, Motus, Vires, Colores,
Senectutisque Praeproperae retardatio._ Which words are not so much a
Definition of it, as an _Encomium_: and yet _Quercetanus_ in his
Description of the same Principle adds to these, divers other
_Epithets_. But both of them, to skip very many other faults that may
be found with their Metaphoricall Descriptions, speak incongruously to
the Chymists own Principles. For if Mercury be an Acid Liquor, either
Hermetical Philosophy must err in ascribing all Tasts to Salt, or else
Mercury must not be a Principle, but Compounded of a Saline Ingredient
and somewhat else. _Libavius_, though he find great fault with the
obscurity of what the Chymists write concerning their Mercurial
Principle, does yet but give us such a Negative Description of it, as
_Sennertus_, how favourable soever to the _Tria Prima_, is not
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