12. Our globe, therefore, was impelled round its sun in perpetual windings, and in the spires of a continued screw, in order that by quick and repeated revolutions it might turn to him all the points of its tender and as yet naked body, and thus receive into itself by all vicissitudes and degrees, the breathings (afflatus) of his heat; for it was not as yet earth, but an uncovered wave, the whole without a shore or slime, and being thus a large fluent heap of the principles of inert nature, operated upon by the rays of a neighboring burning focus, effervesced and boiled from its depths.
(The earth, by spiral excursions, underwent all the vicissitudes of changes.)
[2] To the intent, therefore, that these principles or elements of inert and heavier nature might coalesce into secondary and new principles of water, salt, earth, and the like, and in order that from these principles foetuses of an infinite variety might again finally be hatched, this globe must of necessity have undergone innumerable vicissitudes and changes, which were like so many efficient causes, from whose series, continued in the globe itself, general effects might be produced, which would derive their perfection according to the order of these successive principles, and the perpetual continuations of these causes.
