Wherefore leaving all such questions as these, we will abide simply by the history of the facts, as they are recorded by Moses; that Eve was formed out of the rib of Adam, and that the aperture made in that part of his body was closed up with flesh. Thus Adam was made out of the dust of the ground. I was made out of a drop of my father's blood. But how my mother conceived me, how I was formed in the womb, how my bones grew there, Eccles. 11:5, all this I leave to the glory of my Creator. It is indeed incredible that a man should be born from a drop of blood; yet it is a truth. If therefore this Almighty power can produce a human being from a drop of blood, why not from a lump of earth also, why not from a rib! And as to Adam's sleeping so profoundly, as not to feel what was done unto him; this soundness of sleep is as it were a sweet picture of that change which Adam would have witnessed had he continued in his state of innocency. For a righteous nature could have experienced no pains of death. Adam would have lived in the highest possible pleasure, in obedience to God and in admiration of his works until the time of his change, appointed of God, had come; and then he would have experienced a removal something like this sleep, which fell upon him so sweetly as he lay down amid the roses and beneath the richest foliage of trees. And in such a departing sleep would he have been changed and translated into the glorified spiritual life, feeling no more in death than he felt of his body being opened and of the extraction of the rib, with its flesh, from his side. But now this nature of ours must experience the pangs of death. That dissolution of the body however is followed in the saints by the sweetest of all sleep, until the day when we shall awake unto a newness of life and a life eternal. And as Adam here in all the fulness of wonder exclaims this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and yet was so sweetly and deeply sunk in sleep, that he knew not that his rib had been extracted from his side; so shall we in that day exclaim, Behold, into what sudden glory does this body, lately gnawed by worms, arise, etc. Thus far have we spoken with sufficient copiousness upon the creation of Eve, which creation, although it seems to human reason perfectly fabulous, is yet most sure and true, because it is recorded in the Word of God, which alone teacheth the truth concerning the two principal causes of philosophers, the efficient and the final; and concerning the great first cause of all causes. The knowledge of which two causes, where it can be obtained, is of the utmost moment even in natural things. For what doth it profit to know how beautiful a creature man is, if you know not the end for which he was created; namely, that he was created for the worship of God, and that he might live to all eternity with God.