ledge_:
As it justifies the Discernment of that _Assembly_, to pitch upon Your
Lordship for their _President_, so does it no less discover the Candor,
yea, I presume to say, the Sublimity of your Mind, in so generously
honoring them with your _Acceptance_ of the _Choice_ they have made.

A [1]_Chancellor_, and a very Learned Lord, was the _First_ who honoured
the _Chair_; and a no less Honorable and Learned _Chancellor_, resigns
it to Your Lordship: So as after all the Difficulties and Hardships
the _Society_ has hitherto gone through; it has thro' the Favour and
Protection of its _Presidents_, not only preserv'd its Reputation from
the Malevolence of Enemies and Detracters, but gone on _Culminating_,
and now _Triumphantly_ in Your Lordship: Under whose propitious
Influence, I am perswaded, it may promise it self _That_, which indeed
has hitherto been wanting, to justifie the Glorious _Title_ it bears of
a ROYAL SOCIETY. The _Emancipating_ it from some Remaining and
Discouraging Circumstances, which it as yet labours under; among which,
that of a _Precarious_ and unsteady Abode, is not the least.

This _Honor_ was reserv'd for Your Lordship; and an _Honor_, permit
me to call it, not at all unworthy the Owning of the Greatest Person
living: Namely, the Establishing and Promoting _Real Knowledge_; and
(next to what is _Divine_) truly so called; as far, at least, as Humane
Nature extends towards the Knowledge of Nature, by enlarging her Empire
beyond the Land of _Spectres, Forms, Intentional Species, Vacuum, Occult
Qualities_, and other _Inadequate Notions_; which, by their Obstreperous
and Noisy Disputes, affrighting, and (till of late) deterring Men from
adventuring on further Discoveries, confin'd them in a lazy
Acquiescence, and to be fed with _Fantasms_ and fruitless Speculations,
which signifie nothing to the _specifick_ Nature of Things, solid and
useful knowledge; by the _Investigation of Causes, Principles, Energies,
Powers_, and _Effects_ of _Bodies_, and _Things Visible_; and to improve
them for the Good and Benefit of Mankind.

_My Lord_, That which the _Royal Society_ needs to accomplish an entire
Freedom, and (by rendring their Circumstances more easie) capable to
subsist with Honor, and to reach indeed the Glorious Ends of its
_Institution_, is an Establishment in a more Settl'd, _Appropriate_,
and _Commodious Place_; having hitherto (like the _Tabernacle_ in the
_Wilderness_) been only _Ambulatory_ for al