Of Counsel
How fallacious it is to judge of the nature of things by the ordinary and inconstant use of words, appeareth in nothing more than in the confusion of counsels and commands, arising from the imperative manner of speaking in them both, and in many other occasions besides. For the words “do this,” are the words not only of him that commandeth, but also of him that giveth counsel, and of him that exhorteth; and yet there are but few that see not that these are very different things, or that cannot distinguish between them when they perceive who it is that speaketh, and to whom the speech is directed, and upon what occasion. But finding those phrases in men’s writings, and being not able or not willing to enter into a consideration of the circumstances, they mistake sometimes the precepts of counsellors for the precepts of them that command; and sometimes the contrary, according as it best agreeth with the conclusions they would infer, or the actions they approve. To avoid which mistakes, and render to those terms of commanding, counselling, and exhorting their proper and distinct significations, I define them thus.