And indeed neither sort of Chymists seem to have duly consider'd how great Variety there is in the Textures and Consistences of Compound Bodie; sand [Errata: Bodies; and] how little the consistence and Duration of many of them seem to accommodate and be explicable by the propos'd Notion. And not to mention those almost incorruptible Substances obtainable by the Fire, which I have prov'd to be somewhat compounded, and which the Chymists will readily grant not to be perfectly mixt Bodies: (Not to mention these, I say) If you will but recall to mind some of those Experiments, whereby I shew'd You that out of common Water only mixt Bodies (and even living ones) of very differing consistences, and resoluble by Fire into as many Principles as other bodies acknowledg'd to be perfectly mixt; if you do this, I say, you will not, I suppose, be averse from beleeving, that Nature by a convenient disposition of the minute parts of a portion of matter may contrive bodies durable enough, and of this, or that, or the other Consistence, without being oblig'd to make use of all, much less of any Determinate quantity of each of the five Elements, or of the three Principles to compound such bodies of. And I have (pursues _Carneades_) something wonder'd, Chymists should not consider, that there is scarce any body in Nature so permanent and indissoluble as Glass; which yet themselves teach us may be made of bare Ashes, brought to fusion by the meer Violence of the Fire; so that, since Ashes are granted to consist but of pure Salt and simple Earth, sequestred from all the other Principles or Elements, they must acknowledge, That even Art it self can of two Elements only, or, if you please, one Principle and one Element, compound a Body more durable then almost any in the World. Which being undeniable, how will they prove that Nature cannot compound Mixt Bodies, and even durable Ones, under all the five Elements or material Principles. But to insist any longer on this Occasional Disquisition, Touching their Opinion that would Establish five Elements, were to remember as little as You did before, that the Debate of this matter is no part of my first undertaking; and consequently, that I have already spent time enough in what I look back upon but as a digression, or at best an Excursion. And thus, _Eleutherius_, (sayes _Carneades_) having at length gone through the four Considerations I propos'd to Discourse unto you, I hold it not unfit, for fear my having insisted so long on each of them may have made you forget their _Series_, briefly to repeat them by telling you, that Since, in the first place, it may justly be doubted whether or no the Fire be, as Chymists suppose it, the genuine and Universal Resolver of mixt Bodies; Since we may doubt, in the next place, whether or no all the Distinct Substances that may be obtain'd from a mixt body by the Fire were pre-existent there in the formes in which they were separated from it;