And, _Lastly_, I will shew you to what good uses this solemn day of humiliation may be applied. As to the first: In the reign of this prince, Charles the Martyr, the power and prerogative of the king were much greater than they are in our times, and so had been for at least seven hundred years before; And the best princes we ever had, carried their power much farther than the blessed Martyr offered to do in the most blameable part of his reign. But, the lands of the Crown having been prodigally bestowed to favourites, in the preceding reigns, the succeeding kings could not support themselves without taxes raised by Parliament; which put them under a necessity of frequently calling those assemblies: And, the crown lands being gotten into the hands of the nobility and gentry, beside the possessions of which the Church had been robbed by King Henry the Eighth, power, which always follows property, grew to lean to the side of the people, by whom even the just rights of the Crown were often disputed. But further: Upon the cruel persecution raised against the Protestants, under Queen Mary, among great numbers who fled the kingdom to seek for shelter, several went and resided at Geneva, which is a commonwealth, governed without a king, and where the religion, contrived by Calvin, is without the order of bishops. When the Protestant faith was restored by Queen Elizabeth, those who fled to Geneva returned among the rest home to England, and were grown so fond of the government and religion of the place they had left, that they used all possible endeavours to introduce both into their own country; at the same time continually preaching and railing against ceremonies and distinct habits of the clergy, taxing whatever they disliked, as a remnant of Popery, and continued extremely troublesome to the Church and state, under that great Queen, as well as her successor King James I. These people called themselves Puritans, as pretending to a purer faith than those of the Church established. And these were the founders of our Dissenters. They did not think it sufficient to leave all the errors of Popery, but threw off many laudable and edifying institutions of the primitive Church, and, at last, even the government of bishops; which, having been ordained by the apostles themselves, had continued without interruption, in all Christian churches, for above fifteen hundred years. And all this they did, not because those things were evil, but because they were kept by the Papists. From thence they proceeded, by degrees, to quarrel with the kingly government; because, as I have already said, the city of Geneva, to which their fathers had flown for refuge, was a commonwealth, or government of the people.