The First Part.

And this leads me to consider in the Fifth place, That it will be very hard to prove, that there can no other Body or way be given which will as well as the Fire divide Concretes into several homogeneous Substances, which may consequently be call’d their Elements or Principles, as well as those separated or produc’d by the Fire. For since we have lately seen, that Nature can successefully employ other Instruments than the Fire to separate distinct Substances from mixt Bodies, how know we, but that Nature has made, or Art may make, some such Substance as may be a fit Instrument to Analyze mixt Bodies, or that some such Method may be found by Humane Industry or Luck, by whose means compound Bodies may be resolv’d into other Substances, than such as they are wont to be divided into by the Fire. And why the Products of such an Analysis may not as justly be call’d the component Principles of the Bodies that afford them, it will not be easy to shew, especially since I shall hereafter make it evident, that the Substances which Chymists are wont to call the Salts, and Sulphurs, and Mercuries of Bodies, are not so pure and Elementary as they presume, and as their Hypothesis requires. And this may therefore be the more freely press’d upon the Chymists, because neither the Paracelsians, nor the Helmontians can reject it without apparent Injury to their respective Masters. For Helmont do’s more than once Inform his Readers, that both Paracelsus and Himself were Possessors of the famous Liquor, Alkahest, which for its great power in resolving Bodies irresoluble by Vulgar Fires, he somewhere seems to call Ignis Gehennæ. To this Liquor he ascribes, (and that in great part upon his own Experience) such wonders,