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 seems to have been borrowed from the writings of Lord Bacon.[*] "If a man meet a dog alone," said he, "the dog is fearful, though ever so fierce by nature: but if the dog have his master with him, he will set upon that man from whom he fled before.
This shows, that lower natures, being backed by higher, increase in courage and strength; and certainly man, being backed with Omnipotency, is a kind of omnipotent creature.