these signs of restitution, yet if I confide in them, and begin to say, all was but a natural accident, and nature begins to discharge herself, and she will perfect the whole work, my hope shall vanish because it is not in thee. If thou shouldst take thy hand utterly from me, and have nothing to do with me, nature alone were able to destroy me; but if thou withdraw thy helping hand, alas, how frivolous are the helps of nature, how impotent the assistances of art? As therefore the morning dew is a pawn of the evening fatness, so, O Lord, let this day's comfort be the earnest of to-morrow's, so far as may conform me entirely to thee, to what end, and by what way soever thy mercy have appointed me. FOOTNOTES: [265] Psalm xlvi. 3. [266] Psalm xxxiii. 7. [267] Prov. viii. 29. [268] Josh. iii. 17. [269] Ecclus. xliii. 24. [270] Ecclus. xliii. 27. [271] Wisd. xiv. 3. [272] Wisd. xiv. 5. [273] Acts, xxvii. 11. [274] Luke, v. 3. [275] Acts, xxvii. 24. [276] Mark, v. 2. [277] Acts, xxvii. 31. [278] James, iii. 4. [279] Rev. viii. 9. [280] John, vi. 21. [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.