The Sixth Part.

and Mercury, into which the Fire seems to resolve Vegetable and Animal Bodies, are yet compounded, not simple and Elementary Substances; And that (as appeared by the Experiment of Pompions) the Tria prima may be made out of Water; hoping I say, that you remember These and the other Things that I formerly represented to the same purpose, I shall now add only, that if we doubt not the Truth of some of Helmonts Relation, We may well doubt whether any of these Heterogeneities be (I say not pre-existent, so as to convene together, when a plant or Animal is to be constituted but) so much as in-existent in the Concrete whence they are obtain’d, when the Chymists first goes about to resolve it; For not to insist upon the un-inflamable Spirit of such Concretes, because that may be pretended to be but a mixture of Phlegme and Salt; the Oyle or Sulphur of Vegetables or Animals is, according to him, reducible by the help of Lixiviate Salts into Sope; as that Sope is by the help of repeated Distillations from a Caput Mortuum of Chalk into insipid Water. And as for the saline substance that seems separable from mixt bodies; the same Helmonts tryals*Omne autem Alcali addita pinguedine in aqueum liquorem, qui tandem mera & simplex aqua