make Earth and Water concur with Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, to the Constitution of Mixt bodies. So that one sort of these Spagyrists, notwithstanding the specious Titles they give to the productions of the Fire, do in effect grant what I contend for. And, of the other sort I may well demand, to what Kind of Bodies the Phlegme and dead Earth, to be met with in Chymical Resolutions, are to be referr’d? For either they must say, with Paracelsus, but against their own Concessions as well as against Experience, that these are also compos’d of the Tria Prima, whereof they cannot separate any one from either of them; or else they must confess that two of the vastest Bodies here below, Earth, and Water, are neither of them compos’d of the Tria Prima; and that consequently those three are not the Universal, and Adequate Ingredients, neither of all Sublunary Bodies, nor even of all mixt Bodies.
I know that the chief of these Chymists represent, that though the Distinct Substances into which they divide mixt bodies by the Fire, are not pure and Homogeneous; yet since the four Elements into which the Aristotelians pretend to resolve the like bodies by the same Agent, are not simple neither, as themselves acknowledge, ’tis as allowable for the Chymists to call the one Principles, as for the Peripateticks to call the other Elements; since in both cases the Imposition of the name is grounded only upon the Predominancy of that Element whose name is ascrib’d to it. Nor shall I deny, that this Argument of the Chymists is no ill one against the Aristotelians. But what Answer can it prove to me, who you know am disputing against the Aristotelian Elements, as the Chymicall Principles, and must not look upon any body as a true Principle or Element, but as yet compounded, which is not perfectly Homogeneous, but is further Resoluble into any number of Distinct Substances how small soever. And as for the Chymists calling a body Salt, or Sulphur, or Mercury, upon pretence that the Principle of the same name is predominant in it, That it self is an Acknowledgment of what I contend for; namely that these productions of the Fire, are yet compounded