ames, 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.

XX. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, the God of order, but yet not of ambition, who assignest
place to every one, but not contention for place, when shall it be thy
pleasure to put an end to all these quarrels for spiritual precedences?
When shall men leave their uncharitable disputations, which is to take
place, faith or repentance, and which, when we consider faith and works?
The head and the hand too are required to a perfect natural man;
counsel and action too, to a perfect civil man; faith and works too, to
him that is perfectly spiritual. But because it is easily said, I
believe, and because it doth not easily lie in proof, nor is easily
demonstrable by any evidence taken from my heart (for who sees that, who
searches those rolls?) whether I do believe or no, is it not therefore,
O my God, that thou dost so frequently, so earnestly, refer us to the
hand, to the observation of actions? There is a little suspicion, a
little imputation laid upon over-tedious and dilatory counsels. Many
good occasions slip away in long consultations; and it may be a degree
of sloth, to be too long in mending nets, though that must be done. _He
that observeth the wind shall not