Page:Omniana 2.djvu/111

 consider that for some thousand years science was almost exclusively applied to the purposes of deceit!

Cotton Mather introduces his life of Sir William Phips with a happy allusion to these pretended experiments. "If," says he, "such a renowned chymist as Quercetanus, with a whole tribe of labourers in the fire, since that learned man, find it no easy thing to make the common part of mankind believe, that they can take a plant in its vigorous consistence, and after a due maceration, fermentation, and separation, extract the salt of that plant, which, as it were, in a chaos, invisibly reserves the form of the whole, with its vital principle; and, that keeping the salt in a glass hermetically sealed, they can by applying a soft fire to the glass, make the vegetable rise by little and little out of its ashes, to surprize the spectators with a notable illustration of that resurrection, in the faith whereof the Jews returning from the