some there are who affirm, that by proper Additaments they can reduce Quicksilver into Oyl, nay into Glass, to mention no more. And yet out of all these exotick Compounds, we may recover the very same running Mercury that was the main Ingredient of them, and was so disguis’d in them. Now the Reason (proceeds Carneades) that I have represented these things concerning Gold and Quicksilver, is, That it may not appear absurd to conceive, that such little primary Masses or Clusters, as our Proposition mentions, may remain undissipated, notwithstanding their entring into the composition of various Concretions, since the Corpuscle of Gold and Mercury, though they be not primary Concretions of the most minute Particles or matter, but confessedly mixt Bodies, are able to concurre plentifully to the composition of several very differing Bodies, without losing their own Nature or Texture, or having their cohesion violated by the divorce of their associated parts or Ingredients.
Give me leave to add (sayes Eleutherius) on this occasion, to what you now observ’d, that as confidently as some
