A long time it was they had been surveying the _Decays_, of what was ready now to drop in pieces, whatever shew the out-side made with a noise of _Elements_ and _Qualities_, _Occult_ and _Evident_; abhorrence of _Vacuum_, _Sympathies_, _Antipathies_; _Substantial Forms_, and _Prime matter_ courting _Form_; _Epicycles_, _Ptolemæan Hypotheses_, magisterial _Definitions_, peremptory _Maximes_, _Speculative_, and _Positive Doctrines_, and _alti-sonant Phrases_, with a thousand other _precarious_ and unintelligible _Notions_, &c. all which they have been turning over, to see if they could find any thing of _sincere_ and _useful_ among this _Pedantick Rubbish_, but all in _vain_; here was nothing _material_, nothing of moment _Mathematical_, or _Mechanical_, and which had not been miserably _sophisticated_, on which to lay the stress; nothing in a manner whereby any farther _Progress_ could be made, for the _raising_ and _ennobling_ the _Dignity_ of _Mankind_ in the _Sublimest Operations_ of the _Rational Faculty_, by _clearing_ the _Obscurities_, and _healing_ the _Defects_ of most of the _Phisiological Hypotheses_, repugnant, as they hitherto seemed to be, to the _Principles_ of real _Knowledge_ and _Experience_. Now although it neither were their _Hopes_, or in their prospect to _consummate_ a _Design_ requiring so _mighty Aids_, (inviron’d as they have been with these Prejudices) yet have they not at all _desisted_ from the _Enterprize_; but rather than so Noble and Illustrious an _Undertaking_ should not proceed for want of some generous and industrious _Spirits_ to promote the _Work_; they have _themselves_ submitted to those mean _Imployments_, of _digging_ in the very _Quarry_; yea even and of making _Brick_ where there was no _Straw_, but what they gleaned, and lay dispersed up and down: Nor did they think their Pains yet _ill bestow’d_, if through the assiduous _Labour_, and a _Train_ of continual _Experiments_, they might at last furnish, and leave solid and uncorrupt _Materials_ to a _succeeding_, and more _grateful Age_, for the _building up_ a _Body_ of _real_ and _substantial Philosophy_, which should never _succumb_ to _Time_, but with the _Ruines_ of _Nature_, and the _World_ it self.