Little Question Three of Question Two
Whence Adam’s sleep was caused in the beginning
It is asked whence Adam’s sleep was caused in the beginning, since none of the foregoing things which cause sleep existed: neither could a smoky evaporation of food have ascended to his head or heart, nor had he eaten of the fruits in Paradise before the formation of Eve. It is also asked what Adam saw in that sleep.
To this it is answered that Adam’s sleep—or rapture, or ecstasy—was not from an angel, from heaven, from the smoke of food, or from fatigue, none of which existed in the state of innocence. Rather, it was sent by God as a fitting disposition for receiving divine revelations.
From this you see that even in performing supernatural things God uses natural things insofar as it suits the wisdom of God and the undertaking, although he could accomplish them absolutely without those things. For, as Augustine says, unless someone in a certain manner dies to this life, or has been turned away and alienated from the bodily senses, he is not raised up into a vision of God and of heavenly things.
In this rapture or ecstasy, the pious and most generous God showed great and marvelous things to the first human being, the origin of all posterity.
For Adam himself, placed in that ecstasy or transport of mind and elevated into that which exceeded the state of nature, as the gloss on Ephesians 5 says, was made the first prophet. For, awakened from sleep and looking upon the woman formed from himself, illuminated by divine revelation, he said in the Hebrew idiom: “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; therefore a man shall leave,” and so forth.
He also entered into the sanctuary of God and understood the last things from the beginning. First, as the gloss says, it was revealed to him that from him would be born a human being who would be truly God; that by his death the human race would be redeemed; and that from his side, as he died upon the cross, the faithful Church would be formed.
He also understood that the world was to be destroyed by sin, although not by a sin of its own.
Then perhaps he understood the mystery of the Trinity, the creation of the world from nothing, and the destruction of that same world; and in that ecstasy he received a revelation of the fall of the angels.
He understood the sacrifices which were to exist as a remedy for original sin, although it was not revealed to him that that sin would exist in the future.
He understood that most excellent future life in which human beings, afterward living forever without nourishment, would abide in the clear vision of God if in this life they kept the commandments of God.
He was instructed in the natural and moral sciences. Then he also received an excellent supernatural theological cognition, so that he might impose names upon the first things and cognize the properties of things.
Hence he was constituted the first philosopher and the first theologian, perfect in each science according to the measure of the beginning of his state.
Thus Hugh, speaking in Book VI of On the Sacraments concerning the philosophy and theology of the first human being, says: “No one ought to doubt that the first human being received, through the illumination of a simple divine inspiration, perfect cognition of all visible things which had been made with the human being and for the human being. For God reasonably bestowed upon him knowledge of those things which he made for his sake, and the governance, ordering, and providence of which he left to the human being himself. But if, for temporal life to be preserved and ordered among transitory things, he received so great a knowledge, much more ought he to have possessed a more excellent and abundant cognition of celestial and supernatural things for attaining eternal life.”
Thus Paul, placed in ecstasy and a transport of mind, saw the secrets of God which it is not lawful for a human being to speak.
Likewise, in Orvieto in our own time, a certain woman of our Order of Preachers, a virgin of marvelous humility and devotion, used to suffer ecstasy whenever someone spoke devout and fervent words to her. When she was placed upon a bed as she began to be rapt, with her hands gradually raised and her feet arranged in the manner of the feet of the Crucified, she became so immovable that by no force could her hands or arms be bent, or her feet themselves be separated in any degree.
Concerning the marvelous things and secrets which she perceived in the rapture itself, she sometimes revealed certain things to a few persons and with some difficulty.
These things are from Henry and John of San Gimignano.