those into which the same Bodies are wont to be divided by common Fire. Of which I shall need in this place to mention no other proof, then that whereas we know that in our common _Analysis_ of a mixt Body, there remains a terrestrial and very fixt Substance, oftentimes associated with a Salt as fixt; Our Author tells us, that by his way he could Distill over all Concretes without any _Caput mortuum_, and consequently could make those parts of the Concrete volatile, which in the Vulgar _Analysis_ would have been fixt. So that if our Chymists will not reject the solemn and repeated Testimony of a Person, who cannot but be acknowledg'd for one of the greatest Spagyrists that they can boast of, they must not deny that there is to be found in Nature another Agent able to Analyze compound Bodies less violently, and both more genuinely and more universally than the Fire. And for my own part, though I cannot but say on this Occasion what (you know) our Friend Mr. _Boyle_ is wont to say, when he is askt his Opinion of any strange Experiment; _That He that hath seen it hath more Reason to beleeve it, than He that hath not_; yet I have found _Helmont_ so faithful a Writer, even in divers of his improbable Experiments (I alwayes except that Extravagant Treatise _De Magnetica Vulnerum Curatione_, which some of his Friends affirm to have been first publish'd by his Enemies) that I think it somewhat harsh to give him the Lye, especially to what he delivers upon his own proper Tryal. And I have heard from very credible Eye-witnesses some things, and seen some others my self, which argue so strongly, that a circulated Salt, or a _Menstruum_ (such as it may be) may by being abstracted from compound Bodies, whether Mineral, Animal, or Vegetable, leave them more unlockt than a wary Naturalist would easily beleeve, that I dare not confidently measure the Power of Nature and Art by that of the _Menstruums_, and other Instruments that eminent Chymists themselves are as yet wont to Empoly [Errata: employ] about the Analyzing of Bodies; nor Deny that a _Menstruum_ may at least from this or that particular Concrete obtain some apparently similar Substance, differing from any obtainable from the same Body by any degree or manner of Application of the Fire. And I am the more backward to deny peremptorily, that there may be such Openers of compound Bodies, because among the Experiments that make me speak thus warily, there wanted not some in which it appear'd not, that one of the Substances not separable by common Fires and _Menstruums_ could retain any thing of the Salt by which the separation was made. And here, _Eleutherius_, (sayes _Carneades_) I should conclude as much of my Discourse as belongs to the first Consideration I propos'd, but that I foresee, that what I have delivered will appear liable to two such specious Objections, that I cannot safely proceed any further till I have examin'd them.