Processes of burning were regarded by alchemists and phlogisteans alike, as processes of simplification.
The fact had been noticed and recorded, during the middle ages, that the earth-like matter which remains when a metal is calcined is heavier than the metal itself.

From this fact, modern investigators of natural phenomena would draw the conclusion, that calcination of a metal is an addition of something to the metal, not a separation of the metal into different things.

It seems impossible to us that a substance should be separated into portions, and one of these parts should weigh as much as, or more than, the whole.
The exact investigation of material changes called chemistry rests on the statement that _mass_, and mass is practically measured by _weight_, is the one property of what we call matter, the determination whereof enables us to decide whether a change is a combination, or coalescence, of different things, or a separation of one thing into parts.

That any part of a material system can be removed without the weight of the portion which remains being less than the original weight of the whole system, is unthinkable, in the present state of our knowledge of material changes.
But in the 17th century, and throughout most of the 18th, only a few of those who examined changes in the properties of substances paid heed to changes of weight; they had not realised the importance of the property of mass, as measured by weight.

The convinced upholder of the phlogistic theory had two answers to the argument, that, because the earth-like product of the calcination of a metal weighs more than the metal itself, therefore the metal cannot have lost something in the process; for, if one portion of what is taken away weighs more than the metal from which it has been separated, it is evident that the weight of the two portions into which the metal is said to have been divided must be considerably greater than the weight of the undivided metal.