This Consideration premis'd, it will be, I hope, the more easie to
perswade you that the Fire may as well produce some new textures in a
parcel of matter, as destroy the old.
Wherefore hoping that you have not forgot the Arguments formerly
imploy'd against the Doctrine of the _Tria prima_; namely that the
Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, into which the Fire seems to resolve
Vegetable and Animal Bodies, are yet compounded, not simple and
Elementary Substances; And that (as appeared by the Experiment of
Pompions) the _Tria prima_ may be made out of Water; hoping I say,
that you remember These and the other Things that I formerly
represented to the same purpose, I shall now add only, that if we
doubt not the Truth of some of _Helmonts_ Relation [Errata:
Relations], We may well doubt whether any of these Heterogeneities be
(I say not pre-existent, so as to convene together, when a plant or
Animal is to be constituted but) so much as in-existent in the
Concrete whence they are obtain'd, when the Chymists [Errata: Chymist]
first goes about to resolve it; For not to insist upon the
un-inflamable Spirit of such Concretes, because that may be pretended
to be but a mixture of Phlegme and Salt; the Oyle or Sulphur of
Vegetables or Animals is, according to him, reducible by the help of
Lixiviate Salts into Sope; as that Sope is by the help of repeated
Distillations from a _Caput Mortuum_ of Chalk into insipid Water. And
as for the saline substance that seems separable from mixt bodies; the
same _Helmonts_ tryals[33] give us cause to think, That it may be a
production of the Fire, which by transporting and otherwise altering
the particles of the matter, does bring it to a Saline nature.
[Footnote 33: _Omne autem Alcali addita pinguedine in aqueum liquorem,
qui tandem mera & simplex aqua fit, reducitur, (ut videre est in
Sapone, Lazurio lapide, &c.) quoties per adjuncta fixa semen
Pinguedinis deponit._ Helmont.]
For I know (sayes he, in the place formerly alledg'd to another
purpose) a way to reduce all stones into a meer Salt of equal weight
with the stone whence it was produc'd, and that without any of the
least either Sulphur or Mercury; which asseveration of my Author would
perhaps seem less incredible to You, if I durst acquaint You with all
I could say upon that subject. And hence by the way you may also
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