And it must be this, because, as was said, the altar is greater than the gift; but there is nothing but Christ's divine nature greater than his human. To be sure, a sorry bit of wood, a tree, the stock of a tree, is not. It must be this, because the Scripture says plainly, the altar sanctifies the gift, that is, puts worth and virtue into it. But was it the tree, or the godhead of Christ, that put virtue and efficacy into this sacrifice that he offered to God for us? If thou canst but count thy fingers, judge. Let the tree then be the tree, the sacrifice the sacrifice, and the altar the altar; and let men have a care how, in their worship, they make altars upon which, as they pretend, they offer the body of Christ; and let them leave off foolishly to doat upon wood and the works of their hands. XXIV. DEATH. Seeing man was taken from the ground, he is neither God nor angel, hut a poor earthen vessel, such as God can easily knock in pieces and cause to return to the ground again. And the time of need is the day of death, when I am to pack up all to be gone from hence, the way of all the earth. Now the greatest trial is come, except that of the day of judgment. Now a man is to he stripped of all but that which cannot be shaken. Now a man grows near the borders of eternity. Now he begins to see into the skirts of the next world. Now death is death, and the grave the grave indeed. Now he begins to see what it is for soul and body to part, and what to go and appear before God. Now the dark entry and the thoughts of what is in the way from a death-bed to the gate of the holy heaven, come nearer the heart than when health and prosperity do compass a man about. Some men are cut off like the tops of the ears of corn, and some are even nipped by death in the very bud of their spring; but the safety is when a man is ripe, and shall be gathered to his grave as a shock of corn to the barn in its season. DEATH OF THE SINNER. Death is the axe which God often useth, therewith to take the barren fig-tree out of the vineyard, out of a profession, and also out of the world at once. But this axe is now new-ground; it cometh well edged to the roots of this barren fig-tree. It hath been whetted by sin, by the law, and by a formal profession, and therefore must and will make deep gashes, not only in the natural life, but in the heart and conscience also of this professor. The wages of sin is death, the sting of death is sin. Wherefore, death comes not to this man as he doth to saints, muzzled, or without his sting, but with open mouth, in all his strength; yea, he sends his first-born, which is guilt, to devour his strength and to bring him to the king of terrors.