accurately
_examined_, _squared_, and _adjusted_, before it could be laid: Nor was
this the _Labour_ of a _Few_; less than a much longer time, more Cost
and Encouragement than any which the _Society_ has yet met withal, could
in reason be sufficient effectually to go through so chargeable a Work,
and highly necessary.

A long time it was they had been surveying the _Decays_, of what was
ready now to drop in pieces, whatever shew the out-side made with a
noise of _Elements_ and _Qualities_, _Occult_ and _Evident_; abhorrence
of _Vacuum_, _Sympathies_, _Antipathies_; _Substantial Forms_, and
_Prime matter_ courting _Form_; _Epicycles_, _Ptolemaean Hypotheses_,
magisterial _Definitions_, peremptory _Maximes_, _Speculative_, and
_Positive Doctrines_, and _alti-sonant Phrases_, with a thousand other
_precarious_ and unintelligible _Notions_, &c. all which they have been
turning over, to see if they could find any thing of _sincere_ and
_useful_ among this _Pedantick Rubbish_, but all in _vain_; here was
nothing _material_, nothing of moment _Mathematical_, or _Mechanical_,
and which had not been miserably _sophisticated_, on which to lay the
stress; nothing in a manner whereby any farther _Progress_ could be
made, for the _raising_ and _ennobling_ the _Dignity_ of _Mankind_ in
the _Sublimest Operations_ of the _Rational Faculty_, by _clearing_ the
_Obscurities_, and _healing_ the _Defects_ of most of the _Phisiological
Hypotheses_, repugnant, as they hitherto seemed to be, to the
_Principles_ of real _Knowledge_ and _Experience_.

Now although it neither were their _Hopes_, or in their prospect to
_consummate_ a _Design_ requiring so _mighty Aids_, (inviron'd as they
have been with these Prejudices) yet have they not at all _desisted_
from the _Enterprize_; but rather than so Noble and Illustrious an
_Undertaking_ should not proceed for want of some generous and
industrious _Spirits_ to promote the _Work_; they have _themselves_
submitted to those mean _Imployments_, of _digging_ in the very
_Quarry_; yea even and of making _Brick_ where there was no _Straw_, but
what they gleaned, and lay dispersed up and down: Nor did they think
their Pains yet _ill bestow'd_, if through the assiduous _Labour_, and a
_Train_ of continual _Experiments_, they might at last furnish, and
leave solid and uncorrupt _Materials_ to a _succeeding_, and more
_grateful Age_, for the _building up_ a _Body_ of _real_ and
_substantial Philosophy_, whi