1.

[281] Lam. iii. 26.

[282] Exod. xiii. 21.

[283] Exod. xvi. 10.

[284] 1 Kings, xviii. 43.

XX. ID AGUNT.

_Upon these indications of digested matter, they proceed to purge._

XX. MEDITATION.

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 n