An exposition with practical observations continued upon the thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth, and thirty-seventh chapters of…

Secondly, All the prayers that are for our lusts, or when we resolve to continue in the practise of any lust, are vain prayers. When we do not pray with a purpose to glorify God, with what we shall obtain by prayer, but only to serve our own turns, and ⟨p. 94⟩so bestow it upon our lusts, that's a vain prayer, (James 4.3.) Such praying is rather a mocking than a worshipping of God, a serving of our selves rather than a serving of God. How do they abuse God in prayer, who cry to him for help, whom they have no mind to honour? who would fain be heard of God, yet have no heart to hear God?

Secondly, All the prayers that are for our lusts, or when we resolve to continue in the practise of any lust, are vaine prayers. When we do not pray with a purpose to glorifie God, with what we shall obtain by prayer, but only to serve our own turns, and ⟨p. 94⟩so bestow it upon our lusts, that's a vaine prayer, (James 4.3.) Such praying is rather a mocking than a worshiping of God, a serving of our selves rather than a serving of God. How do they abuse God in prayer, who cry to him for help, whom they have no mind to honour? who would faine be heard of God, yet have no heart to hear God?

Thirdly, That's a vain prayer, when we pray merely to get ease, or deliverance from an affliction, not at all minding our profiting by, or the improvement of an affliction. 'Tis not faith in God, but sense of our own smart, which moves to pray, when we rather look how to get off our burdens,¹ than out of our sins, or to get out of the fire, than to get out our dross; when we pray more to have the plague taken away, than our hard and proud hearts, that is a vain prayer; 'tis like the prayer of Pharaoh, who begged that he might be delivered; but it was the plague of God for his sin, for his hard heart, that troubled him; his hard heart, his sinning against God never troubled him. Pharaoh-like prayers, are vain prayers.