This Consideration premis'd, it will be, I hope, the more easie to perswade you that the Fire may as well produce some new textures in a parcel of matter, as destroy the old. Wherefore hoping that you have not forgot the Arguments formerly imploy'd against the Doctrine of the _Tria prima_; namely that the Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, into which the Fire seems to resolve Vegetable and Animal Bodies, are yet compounded, not simple and Elementary Substances; And that (as appeared by the Experiment of Pompions) the _Tria prima_ may be made out of Water; hoping I say, that you remember These and the other Things that I formerly represented to the same purpose, I shall now add only, that if we doubt not the Truth of some of _Helmonts_ Relation [Errata: Relations], We may well doubt whether any of these Heterogeneities be (I say not pre-existent, so as to convene together, when a plant or Animal is to be constituted but) so much as in-existent in the Concrete whence they are obtain'd, when the Chymists [Errata: Chymist] first goes about to resolve it; For not to insist upon the un-inflamable Spirit of such Concretes, because that may be pretended to be but a mixture of Phlegme and Salt; the Oyle or Sulphur of Vegetables or Animals is, according to him, reducible by the help of Lixiviate Salts into Sope; as that Sope is by the help of repeated Distillations from a _Caput Mortuum_ of Chalk into insipid Water. And as for the saline substance that seems separable from mixt bodies; the same _Helmonts_ tryals[33] give us cause to think, That it may be a production of the Fire, which by transporting and otherwise altering the particles of the matter, does bring it to a Saline nature. [Footnote 33: _Omne autem Alcali addita pinguedine in aqueum liquorem, qui tandem mera & simplex aqua fit, reducitur, (ut videre est in Sapone, Lazurio lapide, &c.) quoties per adjuncta fixa semen Pinguedinis deponit._ Helmont.] For I know (sayes he, in the place formerly alledg'd to another purpose) a way to reduce all stones into a meer Salt of equal weight with the stone whence it was produc'd, and that without any of the least either Sulphur or Mercury; which asseveration of my Author would perhaps seem less incredible to You, if I durst acquaint You with all I could say upon that subject. And hence by the way you may also conclude that the Sulphur and Mercury, as they call them, that Chymists are wont to obtain from compound Bodies by the Fire, may possibly in many Cases be the productions of it; since if the same bodies had been wrought upon by the Agents employ'd by _Helmont_, they would have yielded neither Sulphur nor Mercury; and those portions of them which the Fire would have presented Us in the forme of Sulphureous and Mercurial Bodies would have, by _Helmonts_ method, been exhibited to us in the form of Salt.