But to return to the particulars of _Aqua vitæ_, there will be no hurt here to touch upon this experiment thereof made, very gentile and rare, leaving others that are more common, _Aqua vitæ_ hath this particular, that it dissolves not sugar, nor joines not with it, as doth its flegm and common water, vinegar, and other liquors: but by artifice it self, of two it makes a thrice sweet liquor, very proper against the fluxes of Catarrhs, and salt rheumes, that molest the stomach, and throat, and is thereunto very good and comfortable. Lay in steep a day or two Cinnamon grossely beaten; and take off the infusion very neat: take fine sugar within a pottage dish that hath ears, brought into fine small powder, and so perfume it, mingle it with a small portion of Sugar roset. Poure thereon this _Aqua vitæ_ and make them a little warm upon ashes, then put fire thereto with a lighted paper, stirring all well with a little spit of clean wood, so long untill the _Aqua vitæ_ burn no more, & there will remain a liquor most agreeable to the taste, and mervailously comfortable: you may add thereto liquor of pearls, Coral and other the like, which dissolve easily in the juice of Citron or distilled vinegar, which makes it sweet to stream out upon it a quantity of common water or the phlegm of _Aqua vitæ_: and not by calcining it as _Paracelsus_ and his followers do, with Salt-Peter, which is manifest poyson: so that things are done in vain by more, that may be done by fewer, so that it bee justly done. Further, every one sufficiently knowes how to draw _Aqua vitæ_, filling two parts of the Alimbeck with Glasse, or _Beuvois_ Earth, with good old wine, and distilling it with an easie fire through a Bath in a Caldron full of water, with chaffe. Continue the distillation untill you see long veines and sprouts appear, in the Chappe and in the Recipient. For it is _Aqua vitæ_, which mounts first, and the phlegm comes after in grosse drops, as tears; which is a token that there is no more _Aqua vitæ_. Men may refine it, passing again another time: But I should not bee of an opinion, that to take it into the body, it should bee more then once. And it is a strange thing that by its own subtilty, for it will mount through five or six doubles of paper _brovillas_ without wetting it. I have seen them cast a full glasse thereof in the air, and not one drop to fall to the earth: It is of soveraign force against all burnings and chiefly that of small shot, with which shee hinders (as was said before) the _Estiomenes_ and Gangreenes: which sheweth sufficiently the purity of its fire which may by good right be called Celestiall. See here that which _Raimund Lullius_ sets down of his proprieties and vertues. Wee must not understand (saith he) that neither quintessence nor any other thing here below, can render us immortall. It is ordained for all men once to die: nor can we prolong our dayes beyond and above the prefixed time, for that is reserved to God.