this nature, that it should produce the ultimate matter, which is in water. This water He subjects to special preparation. That which is metallic He separates into metals and arranges each metal separately by itself. That which belongs to gems He also digested into its own nature. That which is stony in like manner. The same is the case with marcasites and other species.
Moreover, if God created time—harvest for the corn and autumn for the fruits—He also appointed its own special autumn for the element of water, so that there might be a certain harvest and definite autumn for all things. So, too, the water is an element, is the matrix, the seed, the root of all minerals. The Archeus is he who in Nature disposes and arranges all things therein, so that everything may be reduced to the ultimate matter of its nature. From Nature man takes these things and reduces them to their ultimate matter. That is, where Nature ends man begins. The ultimate matter of Nature is the primal matter of man. So, then, by an admirable design, God has appointed that the primal matter of Nature should be water, which is soft, gentle, and potable. Yet its offspring or fruit is hard, as metals or stones, than which nothing is harder. The very hardest, therefore, derives its origin from the very softest—the fire from the water—in a way beyond the capacity of man to grasp. But when the element of water becomes the matrix of minerals, this is not beyond the capacity of Nature. God has produced a wonderful offspring from that mother. You judge a man by his mother. Every one has his own special feelings and properties, not according to his bodily organization, but according to his nature. Thus all metals according to their body are water, but according to their special properties they are metals, stones, or marcasites. In no other way can reason grasp that these things are diverse in substance and in body.
Thus, then, God created the element of water, that it might be the element of all metals and stones; and He separated it from the other three elements into a peculiar body which was not in the air, in the earth, in the sky, but was something special, different from these. This he placed on the lower globe so that it might be above the earth and occupy the cavity in the earth where it lies. He founded it with such wonderful ingenuity that together with the earth it should carry men, who might walk and move upon it. And the first thing which moves our wonder in this respect is that it surrounds and encircles the globe and yet does not fall away from its appointed station; so that the part lying under us is turned upwards just as we are, and in the same way hangs suspended downwards. Then our wonder is increased, seeing that the bed or pit of this genuine element, at its centre of greatest depth, is quite bottomless, so that the water receives no support from the earth on which it lies; but it stands freely and firmly in itself like an egg, nor does anything fall away from the shell; and this is a clear miracle of God.
Now, in this element are the generations of all metals and stones, which
