HISTORY OF SULPHUR, ETC. 305 



they will not have to be the matter of things, but the matrixes 

 in which the specifical seeds of things do engender in the 

 nature of a matrix. But for the materia prima, or primary 

 matter (which scholars do lay down as it were naked and 

 indifferent), they substitute those three, Sulphur, Mercury, 

 and Salt; out of which all bodies are gathered together 

 and mixed. We do accept of their words, but their opinions 

 are not very sound. Yet that doth not ill agree with their 

 opinion, namely, that we hold two of them, to wit, sulphur 

 and mercury (taken according to our sense), to be very first 

 and prime natures, and most inward figurations of matter, 

 and almost chief amongst the forms of the first class. But 

 we may vary the words of sulphur and mercury, and name 

 them otherwise oily, waterish, fat, crude, inflammable, not 

 inflammable, or the like. For these seem to be two very 

 great things of the three, and which possess and penetrate 

 the universe, for amongst subterraneal things, they are sul 

 phur and mercury, as they are called ; in the vegetable and 

 animal kind, they are oil and water; in the inferior spi 

 ritual things, they are air and flame ; in the heavenly, the 

 body of a star, and the pure sky; but of this last duality 

 we yet say nothing, though it seem to be a probable decy- 

 phering; for if they mean by salt the fixed part of the 

 body which is not resolved either into flame or smoke, this 

 belongeth to the inquisition of fluid and determinate things. 

 But if we take salt according to the letter without any 

 parabolical meaning, salt is no third thing from sulphur 

 and mercury, but mixed of both, connexed into one by an 

 acrimonious and sharp spirit ; for all manner of salt hath 

 inflammable parts, and other parts also, which not only 

 will not take fire, but do also abhor it and fly from it : yet 

 the inquisition of salt, being somewhat allied to the inqui 

 sition of the other two, and exceeding useful as being a tie 

 and band of both natures, sulphureous and salt, and the 

 very rudiment of life itself, we have thought fitting to 

 comprehend it also within this history and inquisition ; but 

 in the mean time we give you notice, that those spiritual 

 things, air, water, stars, and sky, we do (as they very well 

 deserve it) reserve them for proper and peculiar inqui 

 sitions, and here in this place to set down the history only 

 of tangible, that is to say, mineral or vegetable sulphur 

 and mercury. 



VOL. xiv. 



