out to you; but because, upon the present occasion, it will be no disparagement to you to recede from some of your Paradoxes, since the nature and occasion of your past Discourse did not oblige you to declare your own opinions, but only to personate an Antagonist of the Chymists. So that (concludes he, with a smile) you may now by granting what I propose, add the Reputation of Loving the truth sincerely to that of having been able to oppose it subtilly.
Carneades’s haste forbidding him to answer this crafty piece of flattery; Till I shal (sayes he) have an opportunity to acquaint you with my own Opinions about the controversies I have been discoursing of, you will not, I hope, expect I should declare my own sence of the Arguments I have employ’d. Wherefore I shall only tell you thus much at present; that though not only an acute Naturalist, but even I my self could take plausible Exceptions at some of them; yet divers of them too are such as will not perhaps be readily answer’d, and will Reduce my Adversaries, at least, to alter and Reform their Hypothesis. I perceive I need not minde you that the Objections