Sec. 47.  Then he consider’d further, whether this Three-fold Extension, was the very Essence of Body or not; and quickly found, that besides this Extension, there was another, in which this Extension did exist, and that this Extension could not subsist by it self, as also the Body which was extended, could not subsist by it self without Extension.  This he experimented in some of those sensible Bodies which are endu’d with Forms; for Example, in Clay:  Which he perceiv’d, when moulded into any Figure, (Spherical suppose) had in it a certain Proportion, Length, Breadth, and Thickness.  But then if you took that very same Ball, and reduc’d it into a Cubical or Oval Figure, the Dimensions were chang’d, and did not retain the same Proportion which they had before, and yet the Clay still remain’d the same, without any Change, only that it was necessary for it to be extended into Length, Breadth, and Thickness, in some Proportion or other, and not be depriv’d of its Dimensions:  Yet it was plain to him from the successive Alterations of them in the same Body, that they were distinct from the Clay itself; as also, that because the Clay could not be altogether without them, it appear’d to him that it belong’d to its Essence.  And thus from this Experiment it appear’d to him, that Body consider’d as Body, was compounded of two Properties:  The one of which represents the Clay, of which the Sphere was made; The other, the Threefold Expression of it, when form’d into a Sphere, Cube, or what other Figure soever.  Nor was it possible to conceive Body, but as consisting of these two Properties, neither of which could subsist without the other.  But that one (namely, that of Extension) which was liable to Change, and could successively put on different Figures, did represent the Form in all those Bodies which had Forms.  And that other which still abode in the same State, (which was the Clay, in our last Instance) did represent Corporeity, which is in all Bodies, of what Forms soever.  Now that which we call Clay in the foregoing Instance, is the same which the Philosophers call Materia prima [the first Matter] and [Greek:  Hyle], which is wholly destitute of all manner of Forms.

Sec.. 48.  When his Contemplation had proceeded thus far, and he was got to some distance from sensible Objects, and was now just upon the Confines of the intellectual World, he dissident, and inclin’d rather to the sensible World, which he was more used to.  Therefore he retir’d from the Consideration of abstracted Body,(since he found that his Senses could by no means reach it, neither could he comprehend it) and applied himself to the Consideration of the most simple sensible Bodies he could find, which were those four, about which he had been exercis’d.  And first of all he consider’d the Water, which he found, if let alone in that Condition which its Form requir’d, had these two things in it,