And in many occasions they put for cause of natural events their own ignorance; but disguised in other words: as when they say, fortune is the cause of things contingent; that is, of things whereof they know no cause: and as when they attribute many effects to “occult qualities”; that is, qualities not known to them; and therefore also, as they think, to no man else. And to “sympathy,” “antipathy,” “antiperistasis,” “specifical qualities,” and other like terms, which signify neither the agent that produceth them, nor the operation by which they are produced.

If such “metaphysics” and “physics” as this, be not “vain philosophy,” there was never any; nor needed St. Paul to give us warning to avoid it.