Charles met all such charges with recriminations. He felt shocked, he said, at the impieties and profanations which were committed in sacred places; at the countenance which was given to ignorant and scandalous laymen who had usurped the ministry; at the suspension and reviling of Common Prayer which had become so prevalent; at religion being made the cause and ground of rebellion; and at the destruction of discipline in the "most unblemished Church of Christendom."[470] Nothing could appear right in his estimation which the Parliament did, and even their ordinances for national fasts were met with counter ordinances for fasts at another season. Prelatists and Puritans would not, even for the sins of the nation, fast on the same day; for as at Westminster one party commanded that the last Wednesday in the month should be devoted to humiliation and prayer, at Oxford the other party denounced that appointment, and substituted the second Friday. The Royalists threatened to sequester the estates of such clergymen as would not obey their command; and, amidst all this most unseemly strife, we hear Thomas Fuller exclaiming, in his "Meditations on the Times," "Alas! when two messengers, being sent together on the same errand, fall out and fight by the way, will not the work be worse done than if none were employed? In such a pair of fasts, it is to be feared that the divisions of our affections rather would increase than abate God's anger towards us. Two negatives make an affirmative. Days of humiliation are appointed for men to deny themselves and their sinful lusts. But do not our two fasts more peremptorily affirm and avouch our mutual malice and hatred? God forgive us: we have cause enough to keep _ten_, but not care enough to keep _one_ monthly day of humiliation."[471] To rebut the charge of popery, the King publicly received the sacrament at the hands of Archbishop Ussher, in Christ Church, at the same time making a solemn protestation, that he had prepared his soul to be a worthy receiver, that he derived comfort from the blessed sacrament, and that he supported the true reformed Protestant religion, as it stood in its beauty in the days of Elizabeth, without any connivance at popery. He imprecated, in conclusion, Divine wrath upon himself, if his heart did not join with his lips in this protestation.[472] [Sidenote: _The King at Oxford._]