_Menstruums_, and other Instruments that eminent Chymists themselves
are as yet wont to Empoly [Errata: employ] about the Analyzing of
Bodies; nor Deny that a _Menstruum_ may at least from this or that
particular Concrete obtain some apparently similar Substance,
differing from any obtainable from the same Body by any degree or
manner of Application of the Fire. And I am the more backward to deny
peremptorily, that there may be such Openers of compound Bodies,
because among the Experiments that make me speak thus warily, there
wanted not some in which it appear'd not, that one of the Substances
not separable by common Fires and _Menstruums_ could retain any thing
of the Salt by which the separation was made.
And here, _Eleutherius_, (sayes _Carneades_) I should conclude as much
of my Discourse as belongs to the first Consideration I propos'd, but
that I foresee, that what I have delivered will appear liable to two
such specious Objections, that I cannot safely proceed any further
till I have examin'd them.
And first, one sort of Opposers will be forward to tell me, That they
do not pretend by Fire alone to separate out of all compound Bodies
their _Hypostatical_ Principles; it being sufficient that the Fire
divides them into such, though afterwards they employ other Bodies to
collect the similar parts of the Compound; as 'tis known, that though
they make use of water to collect the Saline parts of Ashes from the
Terrestrial wherewith they are blended, yet it is the Fire only that
Incinerates Bodies, and reduces the fix'd part of them into the Salt
and Earth, whereof Ashes are made up. This Objection is not, I
confess, inconsiderable, and I might in great part allow of it,
without granting it to make against me, if I would content my self to
answer, that it is not against those that make it that I have been
disputing, but against those Vulgar Chymists, who themselves believe,
and would fain make others do so, That the Fire is not only an
universal, but an adaequate [Transcriber's Note: adequate] and
sufficient Instrument to analyze mixt Bodies with. For as to their
Practice of Extracting the fix'd Salt out of Ashes by the Affusion of
Water, 'tis obvious to alleadge, that the Water does only assemble
together the Salt the Fire had before divided from the Earth: as a
Sieve does not further break the Corn, but only bring together into
two distinct heaps the Flour and the Bran, whose Corpuscles before lay
promiscuously blended together in the Meal. This I say I might
47