CENTURY I. 65 



use a gentler heat, and remove the vessel sometimes 

 from the fire ; and again, after some small time, 

 when it is cold, renew the heating of it ; and repeat 

 this alteration some few times : and if you can once 

 bring to pass, that the water, which is one of the 

 simplest of bodies, be changed in colour, odour, or 

 taste, after the manner of compound bodies, you may 

 be sure that there is a great work wrought in 

 nature, and a notable entrance made into strange 

 changes of bodies and productions ; and also a way 

 made to do that by fire, in small time, which the 

 sun and age do in long time. But of the admirable 

 effects of this distillation in close, (for so we call it,) 

 which is like the wombs and matrices of living 

 creatures, where nothing expireth nor separateth 

 we will speak fully, in the due place ; not that we 

 aim at the making of Paracelsus s pigmies, or any 

 such prodigious follies ; but that we know the effects 

 of heat will be such, as will scarce fall under the 

 conceit of man, if the force of it be altogether 

 kept in. 



Experiment solitary touching the impossibility of 



annihilation. 



100. There is nothing more certain in nature than 

 that it is impossible for any body to be utterly annihi 

 lated ; but that as it was the work of the omnipo- 

 tency of God to make somewhat of nothing, so it 

 requireth the like omnipotency to turn somewhat 

 into nothing. And therefore it is well said by an 

 obscure writer of the sect of the chemists, that there 



VOL IV. p 



