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
