shall have occasion to insist on, when I come to discourse with Philoponus concerning the right that fire has to pass for the proper and Universal Instrument of Analysing mixt Bodies, not to Anticipate that, I say, if I were dispos’d to wrangle, I might alledge, that by Themistius his Experiment it would appear rather that those he calls Elements, are made of those he calls mixt Bodies, then mix'd Bodies of the Elements. For in Themistius’s Analyz’d Wood, and in other Bodies dissipated and alter’d by the fire, it appears, and he confesses, that which he takes for Elementary Fire and Water, are made out of the Concrete; but it appears not that the Concrete was made up of Fire and Water. Nor has either He, or any Man, for ought I know, of his perswasion, yet prov’d that nothing can be obtained from a Body by the fire that was not Pre-existent in it.
At this unexpected objection, not only Themistius, but the rest of the company appear’d not a little surpriz’d; but after a while Philoponus conceiving his opinion, as well as that of Aristotle, concern’d in that Objection, You cannot sure
