This being but an inference from the foregoing Discourse, it will not be requisite to insist at large on the proofs of it; But only to point at the chief of Them, and Referr You for Particulars to what has been already Delivered.
In the First place then, from what has been so largely discours’d, it may appear, that the Experiments wont to be brought, whether by the common Peripateticks, or by the vulgar Chymists, to demonstrate that all mixt bodies are made up precisely either of the four Elements, or the three Hypostatical Principles, do not evince what they are alledg’d to prove. And as for the other common arguments, pretended to be drawn from Reason in favour of Aristotelian Hypothesis (for the Chymists are wont to rely almost altogether upon Experiments) they are Commonly grounded upon such unreasonable or precarious Suppositions, that ’tis altogether as easie and as just for any man to reject them, as for those that take them for granted to assert them, being indeed all of them as indemonstrable as the conclusion to be inferr’d from them; and some of them so manifestly weak and prooflesse; that he must be a very courteous adversary, that can be willing to grant them; and as unskilful a one, that can be compelled to do so.
In the next place, it may be considered, if what those Patriarchs of the Spagyrists, Paracelsus and Helmont, do on divers occasions positively deliver, be true; namely that the Alkahest does Resolve all mixt Bodies into other Principles than the fire, it must be decided which of the two resolutions (that made by the Alkahest, or that made by the fire) shall determine the number of the Elements, before we can be certain how many there are.