and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a chain on thy neck. And I put a jewel on thy forehead, and earrings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thy head, Ezek. xvi. 11, 12. The best royal robe that ever Zion put on is the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ; the next to that is the garment of salvation; and under both these "the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, in the sight of God of great price." The finest and most delicate hand is the hand of faith, by which the soul lays hold on eternal life; by this the king of heaven was held in the galleries; with this the princess royal held her adorable lover: "I held him, I would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house and into the chamber of her that conceived me," where the marriage treaty was settled; "My beloved is mine and I am his." The best spiritual bracelet that I know of, is the bond of everlasting love; this is the bond of union and the bond of all perfection, and is a ring for the finger, Luke xv. 22; a chain for the neck, Cant. iv. 9; and a bracelet for the wrist, Ezek. xvi. 11; it is a sure, a satisfactory, and an everlasting token; it is the main tie of eternal wedlock, and the root of all the joys that attend it either in this world or in that which is to come. The hand of faith, however delicate in the eyes of some, is nothing without this ornament; "Faith worketh

love." This ornament makes the spouse appear an honour to her husband and an honourable manager of her household; "Her children rise up

and call her blessed." Faith worketh by love, and love is an helpmate to faith; "Charity believeth all things;" with this working hand the spouse maketh fine linen and selleth it, and delivers girdles of truth to spiritual merchants; strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come, Prov. xxxi. 24, 25.

The golden spurs worn at the coronation may serve to caution us against slothfulness; we are commanded to run the race set before us, not to turn to the right hand or the left, not to look back or tarry in all the plain; Christians are not compared to elephants or camels, but to horses, harts, hinds, and roes; creatures that are swift afoot. The spurs brought to my mind the cutting reproofs and rebukes that the lively and truly gracious christian sometimes gives to the sluggish, careless, and remiss professor. Solomon says, "A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool." A bright, shining, diligent christian is a living reproof to the wicked, and a golden spur to a sluggish professor. Nothing is more mortifying to a heavy jib horse than a good rowelled spur; you know the flock of the house of Judah, that the Lord of hosts visited, are called his goodly horse in the battle, Zech. x. 3, and troop horses are seldom ridden without a provoking spur; Paul speaks of the liberal Corinthians, of whom he boasted to them of Macedonia, that some in Achaia were ready a year ago, and that their zeal had provoked very many, 2 Cor. ix. 2.

The most disagreeable sight to me in all the Tower was what they call, the school of apes. This apish academy, without a teacher, put me in mind of a band of hypocritical professors, who think to bribe heaven with a counterfeit shew, and to pass disguised in sheep's clothing, though they are without Christ in the world. Eliphaz says, "The congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery." That very large ape that sat at the left-hand corner as we entered the room, which took the other little ones into its hands, put them between its hinder legs, warmed them by the fire, hugged them in its arms, while all the little ones sat in awe with their eyes fixed, observing nothing but the motions of him, had a very strange appearance. This lord paramount, which sat as a father of the family, put me in mind of the devil's fondling and making sport of those of his own household, which the Saviour calls the synagogue of Satan. Christ says that mammon is the master of those mimickers of religion, who draw near to God with their mouth while their hearts are far from him; yea, he calls the devil the father of hypocrites; "Wo unto you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites," Luke xi. 44. "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do." Apes are noted for mimickry and activity; I have seen some of them mount over and tumble like a mountebank on a stage; you know the word, hypocrite, signifies a mountebank or stage player in scripture, who

generally appears in the character of another instead of his own, as an hypocrite does in the character of a saint; hence the Saviour's caution, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." I considered the school of apes as lively emblems of Job's congregation of hypocrites, on the following accounts.

First, They come the nighest to the human species of any of the brute creation; and of all the religious orders among men there is none come so near the new creation, or to souls created anew in Christ Jesus as a varnished hypocrite, who has laid by his written form of religion and counterfeits a spiritual worshipper.

Secondly, The use that the ape makes of its fore paws, which are so much like the human hands, displays the dexterity of the hypocrite, who can weave the spider's web of self-righteousness, and hatch the cockatrice egg of serpentine mischief, even in the church of God. Hence wisdom compares the hypocrite to that subtle weaver; and there is a kind of apes called the spider ape; "The spider taketh hold with her hands and is in king's palaces," Prov. xxx. 28; and like the spider, the hypocrite generally entangles himself in his own web; hence Bildad declares" the hypocrite's hope shall perish; whose hope shall be cut off; whose trust shall be a spider's web," Job viii. 13, 14.

Thirdly, The sagacity of the ape which tries

to imitate every thing that it sees a person do; so the hypocrite imitates the saint. Does the christian enforce spiritual holiness? the hypocrite does the same; but to what purpose? if a man was to enforce obedience to the third commandment all the year round to me, yet if himself lived in blasphemy, I should hate him, and lightly esteem his doctrine, as it appeared to have no influence on himself. It is common for hypocrites to make a great outcry against the grace of God, and cry up the holy law as the only rule of life, while any discerning eye may see they privately hate and seek to injure the cause of God; would sooner offend his servants and worshippers, than spend one hour to reform the vile. This shews their enmity against God, the pleasure they take in the triumphs they give the Philistines; besides, precepts enforced by people abandoned to wickedness, who live on, cohabit with, and stand as pimps for private drunkards, what can be expected from them? when it is evident they are destitute of the grace of God, nurses for hypocrites, making a gain of godliness, living like drone bees on the hive of the industrious, and eat the bread of idleness. Reproofs or instructions given by such awful characters only harden rebels in their sins, and can have no more weight on a serious person than the rebukes of Judas, whom the Saviour calls a devil, had, when he rebuked the Saviour and Mary about the waste of ointment; no saint under the dominion of grace and in union with Christ can ever slight the power