easily foreseen, that,
besides gratifying the animosity of the doctrinal Puritans, both the
Puritans in discipline and those in politics would reap considerable
advantages. Laud, Neile, Montague, and other bishops, who were the chief
supporters of Episcopal government, and the most zealous partisans of
the discipline and ceremonies of the church, were all supposed to be
tainted with Arminianism. The same men and their disciples were the
strenuous preachers of passive obedience, and of entire submission to
princes; and if these could once be censured, and be expelled the church
and court, it was concluded, that the hierarchy would receive a mortal
blow, the ceremonies be less rigidly insisted on, and the king, deprived
of his most faithful friends, be obliged to abate those high claims of
prerogative on which at present he insisted.

But Charles, besides a view of the political consequences which must
result from a compliance with such pretensions, was strongly determined,
from principles of piety and conscience, to oppose them. Neither the
dissipation incident to youth, nor the pleasures attending a high
fortune, had been able to prevent this virtuous prince from embracing
the most sincere sentiments of religion: and that character, which in
that religious age should have been of infinite advantage to him, proved
in the end the chief cause of his ruin; merely because the religion
adopted by him was not of that precise mode and sect which began to
prevail among his subjects. His piety, though remote from Popery, had a
tincture of superstition in it; and, being averse to the gloomy
spirit of the Puritans, was represented by them as tending towards the
abominations of Antichrist. Laud also had unfortunately acquired a great
ascendant over him; and as all those prelates obnoxious to the commons,
were regarded as his chief friends and most favored courtiers, he was
resolved not to disarm and dishonor himself by abandoning them to the
resentment of his enemies. Being totally unprovided with military
force, and finding a refractory, independent spirit to prevail among the
people, the most solid basis of his authority, he thought consisted in
the support which he received from the hierarchy.

In the debates of the commons, which are transmitted to us, it is
easy to discern so early some sparks of that enthusiastic fire which
afterwards set the whole nation in combustion. One Rouse made use of
an allusion which, though familiar