For it was fitting that the most perfect and greatest of all works should be made by the greatest of all makers; and it would not have been the most perfect of works if it had not been filled up by perfect parts, so that this world consists of all earth, and all water, and all air, and all fire, not a single particle, no not the smallest imaginable atom, being omitted.
 It follows therefore of necessity, that what is outside must either be a vacuum or nothing at all. If now it is a vacuum, than how can that which is full and solid, and the heaviest of all things, avoid being pressed down by its own weight, since there is no solid thing to hold it up? from which consideration it would appear to be something like a vision, since the mind is always seeking for some corporeal foundation, such as everything which is moved, must of necessity have: and especially the world, inasmuch as it is the greatest of all bodies, and embraces a multitude of other bodies as its own appropriate parts.
 If therefore any one wishes to escape from the difficulties of this question which present themselves in the different doubts thus raised, let him speak freely and say that there is nothing in any material of such power as to be able to support this weight of the world. But it is the eternal law of the everlasting God which is the most supporting and
 
firm foundation of the universe. This it is which, being extended from the centre to the borders, and again from the extremities to the centre, runs through the whole unsubdued course of nature, collecting all the parts and binding them firmly together; for the father who created them has made it the indissoluble bond of the universe. Very naturally and appropriately therefore, all earth will not be dissolved by all water, which the bosom of the earth contains, nor will fire be extinguished by air, nor again will air be burnt up by fire, since the divine law establishes itself as a boundary to all these elements, like a vowel among consonants, so that the universe may, as it were, be harmonious in concert with the music expressed by letters; persuasion, by its own authority, putting an end to the threatening conflicts of contrary natures.