"There is an abstruse astrologer that saith, if it were not for two things that are constant (the one is, that the fixed stars ever stand at like distance one from another, and never come nearer together, nor go further asunder; the other, that the diurnal motion perpetually keepeth time), no individual would last one moment; certain it is, that the matter is in a perpetual flux, and never at a stay. The great winding-sheets that bury all things in oblivion, are two,—deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagrations and great droughts, they do not merely dispeople, but destroy."