_Analysis_ manifestly exhibite the Ingredients they consist of.
Especially since it is very agreeable to the Goodness of Nature, to
disclose, even in some of the most obvious Experiments that Men make,
a Truth so important, and so requisite to be taken notice of by them.
Besides that our _Analysis_ by how much the more obvious we make it,
by so much the more suittable it will be to the Nature of that
Doctrine which 'tis alledged to prove, which being as clear and
intelligible to the Understanding as obvious to the sense, tis no
marvail the learned part of Mankind should so long and so generally
imbrace it. For this Doctrine is very different from the whimseys of
_Chymists_ and other Modern Innovators, of whose _Hypotheses_ we may
observe, as Naturalists do of less perfect Animals, that as they are
hastily form'd, so they are commonly short liv'd. For so these, as
they are often fram'd in one week, are perhaps thought fit to be
laughed at the next; and being built perchance but upon two or three
Experiments are destroyed by a third or fourth, whereas the doctrine
of the four Elements was fram'd by _Aristotle_ after he had leasurely
considered those Theories of former Philosophers, which are now with
great applause revived, as discovered by these latter ages; And had so
judiciously detected and supplyed the Errors and defects of former
_Hypotheses_ concerning the Elements, that his Doctrine of them has
been ever since deservedly embraced by the letter'd part of Mankind:
All the Philosophers that preceded him having in their several ages
contributed to the compleatness of this Doctrine, as those of
succeeding times have acquiesc'd in it. Nor has an _Hypothesis_ so
deliberately and maturely established been called in Question till in
the last Century _Paracelsus_ and some few other sooty Empiricks,
rather then (as they are fain to call themselves) Philosophers, having
their eyes darken'd, and their Brains troubl'd with the smoke of their
own Furnaces, began to rail at the Peripatetick Doctrine, which they
were too illiterate to understand, and to tell the credulous World,
that they could see but three Ingredients in mixt Bodies; which to
gain themselves the repute of Inventors, they endeavoured to disguise
by calling them, instead of Earth, and Fire, and Vapour, Salt,
Sulphur, and Mercury; to which they gave the canting title of
Hypostatical Principles: but when they came to describe them, they
shewed how little they understood what they meant by them, by
disagreeing as much from one another, as from the truth they agreed in
opposing: For they deliver their _Hypotheses_ as darkly as their
Processes; and 'tis almost as impossible for any sober Man to find
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