OF EMPIRE 49 



All precepts concerning kings are in effect comprehended 

 in those two remembrances ; memento quod es homo ; and 

 memento quod es Deus, or vice Dei: the one bridleth their 

 power, and the other their will. 



XX 

 OF COUNSEL 



THE greatest trust between man and man is the trust of 

 giving counsel. For in other confidences men commit the 

 parts of life ; their lands, their goods, their child, their 

 credit, some particular affair ; but to such as they make 

 their counsellors, they commit the whole : by how much 

 the more they are obliged to all faith and integrity. The 

 wisest princes need not think it any diminution to their 

 greatness, or derogation to their sufficiency, to rely upon 

 counsel. God himself is not without, but hath made it 

 one of the great names of his blessed Son ; The Counsellor. 

 Solomon hath pronounced that in counsel is stability. 

 Things will have their first or second agitation : if they be 

 not tossed upon the arguments of counsel, they will be 

 tossed upon the waves of fortune ; and be full of incon- 

 stancy, doing and undoing, like the reeling of a drunken 

 man. Solomon's son found the force of counsel, as his 

 father saw the necessity of it. For the beloved kingdom 

 of God was first rent and broken by ill counsel ; upon 

 which counsel there are set for our instruction the two 

 marks whereby bad counsel is for ever best discerned ; that 

 it was young counsel, for the persons ; and violent counsel, 

 for the matter. 



The ancient times do set forth in figure both the incor- 

 poration and inseparable conjunction of counsel with kings, 

 and the wise and politic use of counsel by kings : the one, 

 in that they say Jupiter did marry Metis, which signifieth 

 counsel ; whereby they intend that Sovereignty is married 

 to Counsel : the other in that which followeth, which was 

 thus: They say, after Jupiter was married to Metis, she 



