20 They proceed to purge

Action is the spirit and the soul of advice.

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.

Laws have their reverence and their majesty when we see the judge upon the bench executing them.

Counsels of war have their operations when we see the seal of an army set to them.

There was an ancient way of celebrating the memory of men who deserved well of the state. A statue in a style which was then called Hermes, the head and shoulders of a man standing upon a square pillar. Those shoulders were without arms and hands.

The lack of arms was a symbol that the counsellor should not reach out for bribes in matters of counsel, and that it was not necessary for the head to employ his own hand to put into action the advice it gave.

It was not meant to imply That the same men should never execute the advice, or that there should not be action on all counsel.

For as matrimony is scarce to be called matrimony where there is a resolution against the having of children, 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 associated with the head, that is their proper element and sphere.

But yet the art of proving, logic, and the art of persuading, rhetoric, are symbolically representd by a clenched fist or open hand.

And the power of God himself is expressed so, All things are in his hand.

So we take into our Meditation the slippery condition of Man whose happiness may be ruined by the defect of any one thing conducing to that happiness. It must have all the pieces to make it up.

Without advice I would not have got thus far. Without action and practice I shall go no further towards health.

But what is the present necessary action?

Purging.

A withdrawing, a violating of nature, a further 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 comfort to be asked now Did your physick make you sick?

Was that it that my physick 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 may accompany other miseries and so put one another into better heart.

I am ground even to an attenuation and must proceed to evacuation.