Truth, I durst not employ some even of the best Experiments I am acquainted with, because I must not yet disclose them; but however, I think I may presume that what I have hitherto Discoursed will induce you to think, that Chymists have been much more happy in finding Experiments than the Causes of them; or in assigning the Principles by which they may best be explain'd. And indeed, when in the writings of _Paracelsus_ I meet with such Phantastick and Un-intelligible Discourses as that Writer often puzzels and tyres his Reader with, father'd upon such excellent Experiments, as though he seldom clearly teaches, I often find he knew; me thinks the Chymists, in their searches after truth, are not unlike the Navigators of _Solomons Tarshish_ Fleet, who brought home from their long and tedious Voyages, not only Gold, and Silver, and Ivory, but Apes and Peacocks too; For so the Writings of several (for I say not, all) of your Hermetick Philosophers present us, together with divers Substantial and noble Experiments, Theories, which either like Peacocks feathers make a great shew, but are neither solid nor useful; or else like Apes, if they have some appearance of being rational, are blemish'd with some absurdity or other, that when they are _Attentively_ consider'd, makes them appear Ridiculous. _Carneades_ having thus finish'd his Discourse against the received Doctrines of the _Elements_; _Eleutherius_ judging he should not have time to say much to him before their separation, made some haste to tell him; I confess, _Carneades_, that you have said more in favour of your Paradoxes then I expected. For though divers of the Experiments you have mention'd are no secrets, and were not unknown to me, yet besides that you have added many of your own unto them, you have laid them together in such a way, and apply'd them to such purposes, and made such Deductions From them, as I have not Hitherto met with. But though I be therefore inclin'd to think, that _Philoponus_, had he heard you, would scarce have been able in all points to defend the Chymical _Hypothesis_ against the arguments wherewith you have oppos'd it; yet me thinks that however your Objections seem to evince a great part of what they pretend to, yet they evince it not all; and the numerous tryals of those you call the vulgar Chymists, may be allow'd to prove something too. Wherefore, if it be granted you that you have made it probable, First, that the differing substances into which mixt Bodies are wont to be resolved by the Fire are not of a pure and an Elementary nature, especially for this Reason, that they yet retain so much of the nature of the Concrete that afforded them, as to appear to be yet somewhat compounded, and oftentimes to differ in one Concrete from Principles of the same denomination in another: