The rebels are deep in slaughter; But I discipline all of them.
That our sacrifices then may please God, they must be according to the rule of his word; for ‘obedience,’ as it has been said already, ‘is better than all sacrifices,’ (1 Samuel 15:22.) But when men retake themselves to false forms of worship or such as are invented, nothing then is holy or acceptable to God, but an abominable filth. And further, the Prophet, as I have said, not only accuses the people of having turned aside to perverted forms of worship, but also of having become obstinately fixed in them. They have become deep, he says, in their superstitions: as he said before, that they were fast joined to their idols, that they could not be torn away from them; so also he says now, that they were deeply rooted in their iniquity. 