[41] But if any men, by a great depth of real knowledge, have been able to represent to themselves the Creator and Governor of this universe, they, according to the common phrase, have advanced upwards from below; for having entered into this world as into a city regulated by admirable laws, and having beheld the earth consisting of mountains, and of plains, and full of seed-crops, and of trees, and of fruits, and also of all kinds of animals; and beholding also seas, and ports, and lakes, and rivers of all sorts, whether proceeding from winter floods, or from everlasting springs, diffused over the surface of it, and the admirable temperature of the breezes and of the atmosphere, and the harmonious changes and well-ordered revolutions of the seasons of the year, and beyond all these things, the sun and moon, the planets and fixed stars, and the whole heaven, and all the host of heaven in its proper arrangement, and, in fact, the whole real world revolving in admirable order and regularity: