The Fourth Part.

not unknown to Chymists, that Quicksilver may be Precipitated, without Addition, into a dry Powder, that remains so in Water. And some eminent Spagyrists, and even Raimund Lully himself, teach, that meerly by the Fire Quicksilver may in convenient Vessels be reduc’d (at least in great part) into a thin Liquor like Water, and minglable with it. So that by the bare Action of the Fire, ’tis possible, that the parts of a mixt Body should be so dispos’d after new and differing manners, that it may be sometimes of one consistence, sometimes of another; And may in one State be dispos’d to be mingl’d with Water, and in another not. I could also shew you, that Bodies from which apart Chymists cannot obtain any thing that is Combustible, may by being associated together, and by the help of the Fire, afford an inflamable Substance. And that on the other side, ’tis possible for a Body to be inflamable, from which it would very much puzzle any ordinary Chymist; and perhaps any other, to separate an inflamable Principle or Ingredient. Wherefore, since the Principles of Chymists may receive their Denominations from Qualities, which it often exceeds not the power of Art, nor alwayes that of the Fire to produce; And since such Qualities may be found in Bodies that differ so much in other Qualities from one another, that they need not be allow’d to agree in that pure and simple Nature, which Principles, to be so indeed, must have; it may justly be suspected, that many Productions of the Fire that are shew’d us by Chymists, as the Principles of the Concrete that afforded them, may be but a new kind of Mixts. And to annex, on this Occasion, to these arguments taken from the Nature of the thing, one of those which Logicians call ad Hominem, I shall desire You to take Notice, that though Paracelsus Himself, and some that are so mistaken as to think he could not be so, have ventur’d to teach, that not only the bodies here below, but the Elements themselves, and all the other Parts of the Universe, are compos’d of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury; yet the learned Sennertus, and all the more wary Chymists, have rejected that conceit, and do many of them confess, that the Tria Prima are each of them made up of the four Elements; and others of them