ares for itself a nutriment, by the
alteration of those things which are corruptible in it. Philolaus
affirms that a destruction happens to the world in two ways; either by
fire failing from heaven, or by the sublunary water being poured down
through the whirling of the air; and the exhalations proceeding from
thence are aliment of the world.

CHAPTER VI. FROM WHAT ELEMENT GOD DID BEGIN TO RAISE THE FABRIC OF THE
WORLD.

The natural philosophers pronounce that the forming of this world took
its original from the earth, it being its centre, for the centre is the
principal part of the globe. Pythagoras, from the fire and the fifth
element. Empedocles determines, that the first and principal element
distinct from the rest was the aether, then fire, after that the
earth, which earth being strongly compacted by the force of a potent
revolution, water springs from it, the exhalations of which water
produce the air; the heaven took its origin from the aether, and fire
gave a being to the sun; those things nearest to the earth are condensed
from the remainders. Plato, that the visible world was framed after the
exemplar of the intellectual world; the soul of the visible world was
first produced, then the corporeal figure, first that which proceeded
from fire and earth, then that which came from air and water.
Pythagoras, that the world was formed of five solid figures which are
called mathematical; the earth was produced by the cube, the fire by the
pyramid, the air by the octahedron, the water by the icosahedron, and
the globe of the universe by the dodecahedron. In all these Plato hath
the same sentiments with Pythagoras.

CHAPTER VII. IN WHAT FORM AND ORDER THE WORLD WAS COMPOSED.

Parmenides maintains that there are small coronets alternately twisted
one within another, some made up of a thin, others of a condensed,
matter; and there are others between mixed mutually together of light
and of darkness, and around them all there is a solid substance, which
like a firm wall surrounds these coronets. Leucippus and Democritus
cover the world round about, as with a garment and membrane. Epicurus
says that that which abounds some worlds is thin, and that which limits
others is gross and condensed; and of these spheres some are in motion,
others are fixed. Plato, that fire takes the first place in the world,
the second the aether, after that the air, under that the water; the
last place the earth possesseth: sometimes h