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 almost Forty Years:  But Solomon built the First Temple; and what forbids us to hope, that as Great a Prince may build Solomon’s House, as that Great Chancellor (one of Your Lordship’s Learned Predecessors) had design’d the Plan; there being nothing in that August and Noble Model impossible, or beyond the Power of Nature and Learned Industry.

Thus, whilst King Solomon’s Temple was Consecrated to the God of Nature, and his true Worship; This may be Dedicated, and set apart for the Works of Nature; deliver’d from those Illusions and Impostors, that are still endeavouring to cloud and depress the True, and Substantial Philosophy:  A shallow and Superficial Insight, wherein (as that Incomparable Person rightly observes) having made so many Atheists:  whilst a profound and thorow Penetration into her Recesses (which is the Business of the Royal Society) would lead Men to the Knowledge, and Admiration of the Glorious Author.

And now, My Lord, I expect some will wonder what my Meaning is, to usher in a Trifle, with so much Magnificence, and end at last in a fine Receipt for the Dressing of a Sallet with an Handful of Pot-Herbs!  But yet, My Lord, this Subject, as low and despicable as it appears, challenges a Part of Natural History, and the Greatest Princes have thought it no Disgrace, not only to make it their Diversion, but their Care, and to promote and encourage it in the midst of their weightiest Affairs:  He who wrote of the Cedar of Libanus, wrote also of the Hysop which grows upon the Wall.