as Flesh too long kept produces Magots, and old Cheese Mites, which I suppose you will not affirm to be Ingredients of those Bodies. Now that fire do’s not alwayes barely separate the Elementary parts, but sometimes at least alter also the Ingredients of Bodies, if I did not expect ere long a better occasion to prove it, I might make probable out of your very Instance, wherein there is nothing Elementary separated by the great violence of the Refiners fire: the Gold and Lead which are the two Ingredients separated upon the Analysis being confessedly yet perfectly mixt Bodies, and the Litharge being Lead indeed; but such Lead as is differing in consistence and other Qualities from what it was before. To which I must add that I have sometimes seen, and so questionlesse have you much oftener, some parcells of Glasse adhering to the Test or Cuppel, and this Glass though Emergent as well as the Gold or Litharge upon your Analysis, you will not I hope allow to have been a third Ingredient of the Mass out of which the fire produc’d it.
Both Philoponus and Themistius were about to reply, when Eleutherius apprehending that the Prosecution of this Dispute would take up time, which might be better employ’d, thought fit to prevent them by saying to Carneades: You made at least half a Promise, when you first propos’d this Objection, that you would not (now at least) insist on it, nor indeed does it seem to be of absolute necessity to your cause, that you should. For though you should grant that there are Elements, it would not follow that there must be precisely four. And therefore I hope you will proceed to acquaint us with your other and more considerable Objections against Themistius’s Opinion, especially since there is so great a Disproportion in Bulke betwixt the Earth, Water and Air, on the one part, and those little parcells of resembling substances, that the fire separates from Concretes on the other part, that I can scarce think that you are serious, when to lose no advantage against your Adversary, you seem to deny it to be rational, to conclude these great simple Bodies to be the Elements, and not the Products of compounded ones.