Though counsel seem rather to consist of spiritual parts than action,
yet action is the spirit and the soul of counsel. Counsels are not
always determined in resolutions, we cannot always say, this was
concluded; actions are always determined in effects, we can say, this
was done. Then have laws their reverence and their majesty, when we see
the judge upon the bench executing them. Then have counsels of war
their impressions and their operations, when we see the seal of an army
set to them. It was an ancient way of celebrating the memory of such as
deserved well of the state, to afford them that kind of statuary
representation, which was then called Hermes, which was the head and
shoulders of a man standing upon a cube, but those shoulders without
arms and hands. Altogether it figured a constant supporter of the state,
by his counsel; but in this hieroglyphic, which they made without hands,
they pass their consideration no farther but that the counsellor should
be without hands, so far as not to reach out his hand to foreign
temptations of bribes, in matters of counsel, and that it was not
necessary that the head should employ his own hand; that the same men
should serve in the execution which assisted in the counsel; but that
there should not belong hands to every head, action to every counsel,
was never intended so much as in figure and representation. For as
matrimony is scarce to be called matrimony where there is a resolution
against the fruits of matrimony, against the having of children,[285] so
counsels are not counsels, but illusions, where there is from the
beginning no purpose to execute the determinations of those counsels.
The arts and sciences are most properly referred to the head; that is
their proper element and sphere; but yet the art of proving, logic, and
the art of persuading, rhetoric, are deduced to the hand, and that
expressed by a hand contracted into a fist, and this by a hand enlarged
and expanded; and evermore the power of man, and the power of God,
himself is expressed so. All things are in his hand; neither is God so
often presented to us, by names that carry our consideration upon
counsel, as upon execution of counsel; he oftener is called the Lord of
Hosts than by all other names, that may be referred to the other
signification. Hereby therefore we take into our meditation the slippery
condition of man, whose happiness in any kind, the defect of any one
thing conducing to that happiness, may ruin; but it must have all the
pieces to make it up. Without counsel, I had not got thus far; without
action and practice, I should go no farther towards health. But what is
the present necessary action? Purging; a withdrawing, a violating of
nature, a farther weakening. O dear price, and O strange way of
addition, to do it by subtraction; of restoring nature, to violate
nature; of providing strength, by increasing weakness. Was I not sick
before? And is it a question of comfort to be asked now, did your physic
make you sick? Was that it that my physic promised, to make me sick?
This is another step upon which we may stand, and see farther into the
misery of man, the time, the season of his misery; it must be done now.
O over-cunning, over-watchful, over-diligent, and over-sociable misery
of man, that seldom comes alone, but then when it may accompany other
miseries, and so put one another into the higher exaltation, and better
heart. I am ground even to an attenuation and must proceed to
evacuation, all ways to exinanition and annihilation.