And amongst other things, because that next the Stars, I know nothing in the world but Fire, which produceth light, I studied to make all clearly understood which belongs to its nature; how it's made, how it's fed, how sometimes it hath heat onely without light, and sometimes onely light without heat; how it can introduce several colours into several bodies, and divers other qualities; how it dissolves some, and hardens others; how it can consume almost all, or convert them into ashes and smoak: and last of all, how of those ashes, by the only violence of its action, it forms glass. For this transmutation of ashes into glass, seeming to me to be as admirable as any other operation in Nature, I particularly took pleasure to describe it. Yet would I not inferre from all these things, that this World was created after the manner I had proposed. For it is more probable that God made it such as it was to be, from the beginning. But it's certain, and 'tis an opinion commonly received amongst the Divines, That the action whereby he now preserveth it, is the same with that by which he created it. So that, although at the beginning he had given it no other form but that of a Chaos (provided, that having established the Laws of Nature, he had afforded his concurrence to it, to work as it used to do) we may beleeve (without doing wrong to the miracle of the Creation) that by that alone all things which are purely material might in time have rendred themselves such as we now see them: and their nature is far easier to conceive, when by little and little we see them brought forth so, then when we consider them quite form'd all at once.