Whereas could all these marvelous realities be seen and estimated by the vision of true faith, they would be no more common things to the beholder, nor less miracles, than that which Moses here records, when he testifies that one of Adam's ribs was taken from his side while he was asleep, and that the woman Eve was formed out of it by the hand of God. For if it had pleased the Lord to form us as he did Adam, from the dust of the ground, by this time that manner of forming man might have ceased also to be a miracle in our sight; and we might now perhaps be rather admiring the existing law of the generation of mankind by male and female. So true is that barbarously-composed perhaps, but by no means random-shot poetical line, _Omne rarum carum: vilescit quotidianum._ "Rare things will e'er delight our eyes, But common things are no surprise." Thus if the stars did not rise every night and in all places, what crowds would gather where the light of one night's starry heaven might be witnessed! But now not one of us opens a single window to behold the sight. Most justly condemnable, therefore, is our ingratitude. For if we believe God to be the efficient and final _cause_ of all things, ought we not to wonder at his works, to be delighted with them, and to proclaim them always and everywhere? But how few are there who do this in truth and from the heart? In vain therefore and absurd is the doctrine of Aristotle, that man and the sun beget man. We learn from this book a far different cause of propagation, the commanding Word of God which says to this and to that husband, Thy drop of blood shall on this occasion become a male, and on that occasion a female. But of this word reason knows nothing. Therefore reason can do nothing but invent trifles and absurdities concerning the causes of such mighty things. Medical professors, following the philosophers, have given us their various opinions concerning the propagation of mankind; and though reason may not be able to deny the justness of many of them, yet all of them put together cannot reach the _great first cause_. The Holy Spirit leads us far deeper than all the opinions of men, when it sets before us the Word of God, by which all things are created and conserved. Hence the mighty reason why a man, and not an ox nor an ass, is generated by a drop of human blood, is the effectual power of the Word which was spoken by God at the creation of all things, "in the beginning." It is in divine truth therefore that Christ teaches us in the Lord's Prayer to call upon God as our _Father_, and that the Creed teaches us to confess God as our _Creator_. When we look back therefore to this first cause, then can we speak of all these things with pureness, with holiness and with joy. But if we leave out the first cause, we cannot even think of them without baseness and obscenity.