Praeparatio Evangelica (The Preparation of the Gospel)

'Matter is the substratum to generation and decay and the other changes.

'The Schools of Thales and Pythagoras, and the Stoics: matter is wholly and thoroughly subject to change and alteration and flux.

'The School of Democritus: the primary elements are impassible, namely, the atom, the vacuum, and the incorporeal.

'Aristotle and Plato say that matter is corporeal, without form, specific character, shape, or quality, so far as it depends on its own nature, but receptive of the specific forms, as it were a nurse, and a mould, and a matrix. But those who say that matter is water, or fire, or air, or earth, no longer speak of it as without form, but as body: while those who say that it is the indivisible bodies and atoms, do regard it as without form.'