though (as I lately noted) Saline Corpuscles abound, Yet there is besides a large proportion of Phlegme, as may easily be discovered by coagulating the Saline Corpuscles with any convenient Body; as I lately told you, our Friend coagulated part of the Spirit of Salt with Spirit of Urine: and as I have divers times separated a salt from Oyle of Vitriol it self (though a very ponderous Liquor and drawn from a saline body) by boyling it with a just quantity of Mercury, and then washing the newly coagulated salt from the Precipitate with fair Water. Now to what can we more probably ascribe this plenty of aqueous Substance afforded us by the Distillation of such bodies, than unto this, That among the various operations of the Fire upon the matter of a Concrete, divers particles of that matter are reduc’d to such a shape and bignesse as is requisite to compose such a Liquor as Chymists are wont to call Phlegme or Water. How I conjecture this change may be effected, ’tis neither necessary for me to tell you, nor possible to do so without a much longer discourse then were now seasonable. But I desire you would with me reflect upon what I formerly told you concerning the change of Quicksilver into Water; For that Water having but a very faint tast, if any whit more than divers of those liquors that Chymists referr to Phlegme; By that experiment it seems evident, that even a metalline body, and therefore much more such as are but Vegetable or Animal, may by a simple operation of the Fire be turn’d in great part into Water. And since those I dispute with are not yet able out of Gold, or Silver, or divers other Concretes to separate any thing like Water; I hope I may be allow’d to conclude against Them, that water it self is not an Universal and pre-existent Ingredient of Mixt Bodies.
But as for those Chymists that, Supposing with me the Truth of what Helmont relates of the Alkahest’s wonderful Effects, have a right to press me with his Authority concerning them, and to alledge that he could Transmute all reputedly mixt Bodies into insipid and meer Water; To those I shall represent, That though his Affirmations conclude strongly against the Vulgar Chymists (against whom I have not therefore scrupl’d