The Summary of Physics Restored

119If those four things believed to be elements exchanged their own natures and dwellings in turn, as though by trading at fairs, the entire mass of this world would be enslaved to chance and random motion and would move in perpetual fluctuation. Yet God has established it with a certain and constant law and station, and with distinct parts. For earth would soon become water; from water would come air, from air fire, and conversely. In this way the centre would migrate to the circumference and the circumference to the centre; the outermost and middle parts of the world would of their own accord withdraw from their stations. After a long succession of ages, Nature’s order would be wholly reversed, the highest mingling with the lowest and the lowest with the highest in perpetual confusion. Whoever imagines the world’s fabric ordered in this way bids us call so excellent a work chaos and abyss rather than a world—something Nature, the friend of order, abhors.