Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy delivered…

Doct. 6. Hypocritical service is no better then robbery, pretended service to God: to come reeking from our sins into the house of God to perform a few formal duties, and when we have done, to go thence again with more greedy desires after it; what is this, but to turn the house of God into a den of Robbers.

Doct. 6. Hypocritical service is no better then robbery, pretended service to God: to come reaking from our sins into the house of God to perform a few formal duties, and when we have done, to go thence again with more greedy desires after it; what is this, but to turn the house of God into a den of Robbers.

Reas. 1. Because God is hereby robbed of that glory which is due to his Name, who requires hearty service; which the hypocrite offers up to the Idol of his heart, and not unto God; he gives that glory which is alone due to God, to his graven Images, to his own by ends and aims; God requires the heart, because he knows that that is the leader of all the rest of the faculties, and it is his due, for he made it; but the hypocrite steals the best piece of the sacrifice from God, and is not this Robbery.

Reas. 2. Because the sinner hereby robs himself of all the good which he should otherwise get by his service, if it were done in sincerity. Ezek. 14. 7, 8. God hath made great promises to sincerity, in manifold expressions in Scripture, but he denounceth fore woes upon hypocrites, destructive desolation and ruin; so that it is time lost, and rooting our selves out from good.

Reas. 2. Because the sinner hereby robs himself of all the good which he should otherwise get by his service, if it were done in sincerity.