Where no counsel [is], the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors [there is] safety.
Ver. 14. Where no counsel is, the people fall.] As where no pilot is, the ship miscarrieth. The Vulgate render it, Ubi non est gubernator, corruit populus. Tyranny is better than anarchy. And yet, "Woe also to thee, O land, whose king is a child"; that is, wilful and uncounsellable, as Rehoboam, who was a child at forty years old, whenas his father was a man at twenty. Age is no just measure of wisdom, and royalty without wisdom is but eminent dishonour. Solomon the wise chose him an excellent council of state, whom Rehoboam refused to hear, being as much more wilful than his father, as less wise - all head, no heart, losing those ten tribes with a churlish breath, and returning to Jerusalem lighter by a crown than he went forth. He and his green headed council was like Alcibiades and his army, where all would be leaders, none learners. Or it may be it was now in Israel as once it was in Persia, and as now it is in Turkey, when the great Turk stands at the dangerous door, where if any counsellor delivered anything contrary to the king's mind, flagris caedebatur, he was chastised with rods. a Or as in Regno Cyclopico ubi, ουδεις ουδεν ουδενος ακουει, where no man cared for better counsel, but each one did what was good in his own eyes. b Such cannot long subsist.
But in the multitude of counsellors.] So they be good counsellors; better than Balaam was, better than Ahithophel, better than those of Aurelius, by whom the good emperor was even bought and sold. c One special thing the primitive Christians prayed for the emperor was, that God would send him Senatum fidelem, a faithful council. There were in Josiah's days horrible abominations; and why? "The princes were as roaring lions, the judges wolves," &c. Zep 3:3 Queen Elizabeth was happy in her council, by whom she was mostly ruled, and grew amiable to her friends, and formidable to her enemies, both at home and abroad. "Wisdom is better than strength," saith Solomon; and, Romani sedendo vincunt, The Romans conquer by being settled. d said they of old. The welfare of a state is procured and preserved, not so much by a multitude of worthy warriors as of wise counsellors; as Cleon, in Thucydides long since observed, e and as we have blessedly found in this present Parliamentum benedictum, more truly so styled than that was in the twenty-fifth of Edward III.
a Turk. Hist. Keckerm. Politic.
b Ulysses interrogat, quale regnum esset Cyclopicum? Respondet Silenus, Nουαδες ακουει ουδεις ουδενος .
c Tertul. Apol.
d Polybius.
e Thucyd., lib. iii.