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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67467	The life of Dr. Sanderson, late Bishop of Lincoln written by Izaak Walton ; to which is added, some short tracts or cases of conscience written by the said Bishop.	Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683.; Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. Judgment concerning submission to usurpers.; Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. Pax ecclesiae.; Hooker, Richard, 1553 or 4-1600. Sermon of Richard Hooker, author of those learned books of Ecclesiastical politie.; Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. Judgment in one view for the settlement of the church.; Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. Judicium Universitatis Oxoniensis. English.	1678 (1678)	Wing W667; ESTC R8226	137,878	542

a devout contrition and at least resolutions to amend their lives and having done that he would take them though never so poor to dinner with him and use them friendly and dismiss them with his blessing and perswasions to a vertuous life and beg them to believe him And his Humility and Charity and other Christian Excellencies were all like this Of all which the Reader may inform himself in his Life truly writ and printed before his Sermons And in this year also the very prudent and very wise Lord Elsmere who was so very long Lord Chancellor of England and then of Oxford resigning up the last the right Honourable and as magnificent William Herbert Earl of Pembroke was chose to succeed him And in this year our late King Charles the First then Prince of Wales came honourably attended to Oxford and having deliberately visited the University the Schools Colledges and Libraries He and his Attendants were entertained with Ceremonies and Feasting sutable to their Dignity and Merirs And this year King Iames sent Letters to the University for the regulating their Studies especially of the young Divines Advising they should not rely on modern Sums and Systemes but study the Fathers and Councils and the more Primitive Learning And this advice was occasioned by the indiscreet inferences made by very many Preachers out of Mr. Calvin's Doctrine concerning Predestination Vniversal Redemption the Irresistibility of God's Grace and of some other knotty Points depending upon these Points which many think were not but by Interpreters forc'd to be Mr. Calvin's meaning of the truth or falshood of which I pretend not to have an ability to judge my meaning in this Relation being only to acquaint the Reader with the occasion of the King's Letter It may be observed that the various accidents of this year did afford our Proctor large and laudable matter to relate and discourse upon And that though his Office seem'd according to Statute and Custome to require him to do so at his leaving it yet he chose rather to pass them over with some very short Observations and present the Governours and his other Hearers with rules to keep up Discipline and Order in the University which at that time was either by defective Statutes or want of the due execution of those that were good grown to be extreamly irregular And in this year also the Magisterial part of the Proctor requir'd more diligence and was more difficult to be managed than formerly by reason of a multiplicity of new Statutes which begot much confusion some of which Statutes were then and others suddenly after put into a useful execution And though these Statutes were not then made so perfectly useful as they were design'd till Archbishop Laud's time who assisted in the forming and promoting them yet our present Proctor made them as effectual as discretion and diligence could do Of which one Example may seem worthy the noting namely That if in his Night-walk he met with irregular Scholars absent from their Colledges at University hours or disordered by drink or in scandalous company he did not use his power of punishing to an extremity but did usually take their names and a promise to appear before him unsent for next morning And when they did convinced them with such obligingness and reason added to it that they parted from him with such resolutions as the man after God's own heart was possess'd with when he said There is mercy with thee and therefore thou shalt be feared And by this and a like behaviour to all men he was so happy as to lay down this dangerous imployment as but very few if any have done even without an Enemy After his Speech was ended and he retir'd with a Friend into a convenient privacy he look'd upon his Friend with a more than common chearfulness and spake to him to this purpose I look back upon my late imployment with some content to my self and a great thankfulness to Almighty God that he hath made me of a temper not apt to provoke the meanest of mankind but rather to pass by infirmities if noted and in this Imployment I have had God knows many occasions to do both And when I consider how many of a contrary temper are by sudden and small occasions transported and hurried by Anger to commit such Errors as they in that passion could not foresee and will in their more calm and deliberate thoughts upbraid and require repentance And Consider that though Repentance secures us from the punishment of any sin yet how much more comfortable it is to be innocent than need pardon And consider that Errors against men though pardon'd both by God and them do yet leave such anxious and upbraiding impressions in the memory as abates of the Offender's content When I consider all this and that God hath of his goodness given me a temper that hath prevented me from running into such enormities I remember my temper with joy and thankfulness And though I cannot say with David I wish I could that therefore his praise shall always be in my mouth yet I hope that by his grace and that grace seconded by my endeavours it shall never be blotted out of my memory and I now beseech Almighty God that it never may And here I must look back and mention one passage more in his Proctorship which is That Gilbert Sheldon the late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury was this year sent to Trinity Colledge in that University and not long after his entrance there a Letter was sent after him from his Godfather the Father of our Proctor to let his Son know it and commend his God-son to his acquaintance and to more than a common care of his behaviour which prov'd a pleasing injunction to our Proctor who was so gladly obedient to his Fathers desire that he some few days after sent his Servitor to intreat Mr. Sheldon to his Chamber next morning But it seems Mr. Sheldon having like a young man as he was run into some such irregularity as made him cautious he had transgress'd his Statutes did therefore apprehend the Proctor's invitation as an introduction to punishment the fear of which made his Bed restless that night but at their meeting the next morning that fear vanished immediately by the Proctor's chearful countenance and the freedom of their discourse of Friends And let me tell my Reader that this first meeting prov'd the beginning of as spirituala friendship as human nature is capable of of a friendship free from all self ends and it continued to be so till death forc'd a separation of it on earth but 't is now reunited in heaven And now having given this account of his behaviour and the considerable accidents in his Proctorship I proceed to tell my Reader that this busie imployment being ended he preach'd his Sermon for his degree of Batchelor in Divinity in as eligant Latin and as remarkable for the matter as hath been preach'd in that

heart is fixed O God my heart is fixed where true joy is to be found His thought sseem'd now to be wholly of death for which he was so prepar'd that that King of Terrors could not surprise him as a thief in the night for he had often said he was prepar'd and long'd for it And as this desire seem'd to come from Heaven so it left him not till his Soul ascended to that Region of blessed Spirits whose Imployments are to joyn in consort with him and sing praise and glory to that God who hath brought them to that place into which sin and sorrow cannot enter Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive innocence chang'd this for a better life 'T is now too late to wish that my life may be like his for I am in the eighty fifth year of my Age but I humbly beseech Almighty God that my death may and do as earnestly beg of every Reader to say Amen Blessed is the man in whose Spirit there is no guile Postscript IF I had had time to have review'd this Relation as I intended before it went to the Press I could have contracted some and altered other parts of it but 't was hastned from me and now too late for this impression If there be a second which the Printer hopes for I shall both do that and upon information mend any mistake or supply what may seem wanting I. W. Dr. PIERCE's LETTER Good Mr. Walton AT my return to this place I made a yet stricter search after the Letters long ago sent me from our most excellent Dr. Sanderson before the happy Restoration of the King and Church of England to their several Rights in one of which Letters more especially he was pleas'd to give me a Narrative both of the rise and the progress and reasons also as well of his younger as of his last and riper Judgment touching the famous Points controverted between the Calvinians and the Arminians as they are commonly though unjustly unskilfully miscalled on either side The whole Letter I allude to does consist of several sheets whereof a good part has been made publick long ago by the most learned most judicious most pious Dr. Hammond to whom I sent it both for his private and for the publick satisfaction if he thought fit in his excellent Book intituled A Pacifick Discourse of God's Grace and Decrees in full accordance with Dr. Sanderson To which Discourse I referr you for an account of Dr. Sanderson and the History of his Thoughts in his own hand-writing wherein I sent it to Westwood as I receiv'd it from Boothby Pannel And although the whole Book printed in the year 1660. and reprinted since with his other Tracts in Folio is very worthy of your perusal yet for the Work you are about you shall not have need to read more at present than from the 8 th to the 23 th page and as far as the end of § 33. There you will find in what year the excellent man whose life you write became a Master of Arts. How his first reading of learned Hooker had been occasioned by certain Puritanical Pamphlets and how good a preparative he found it for his reading of Calvin's Institutions the honour of whose name at that time especially gave such credit to his Errors How he erred with Mr. Calvin whilst he took things upon trust in the sublapsarian way How being chosen to be a Clerk of the Convocation for the Diocese of Lincol 1625. He reduced the Quinquarticular Controversie into five Schemes or Tables and thereupon discerned a necessity of quitting the Sublapsarian way of which he had before a better liking as well as the Supralapsarian which he could never phancy There you will meet with his two weighty Reasons against them both and find his happy change of Iudgment to have been ever since the year 1625 even 34 years before the World either knew or at least took notice of it And more particularly his Reasons for rejecting Dr. Twiss or the way He walks in although his acute and very learned and ancient Friend I now proceed to let you know from Dr. Sanderson's own hand which was never printed and which you can hardly know from any unless from his Son or from my self That when that Parliament was broken up and the Convocation therewith dissolved a Gentleman of his Acquaintance by occasion of some discourse about these Points told him of a Book not long before published at Paris A. D. 1623. by a Spanish Bishop who had undertaken to clear the Differences in the great Controversie De Concordiâ Gratiae Liberi Arbitrij And because his Friend perceived he was greedily desirous to see the Book he sent him one of them containing the four first Books of twelve which he intended then to publish When I had read says Dr. Sanderson in the following words of the same Letter his Epistle Dedicatory to the Pope Greg. 15. he spake so highly of his own Invention that I then began rather to suspect him for a Mountebank than to hope I should find satisfaction from his performances I found much confidence and great pomp of words but little matter as to the main Knot of the Business other than had been said an hundred times before to wit of the coexistence of all things past present and future in mente divinâ realiter ab aeterno which is the subject of his whole third Book only he interpreteth the word realiter so as to import not only praesentialitatem objectivam as others held before him but propriam actualem existentiam Yet confesseth 't is hard to make this intelligible In his fourth Book he endeavours to declare a twofold manner of God's working ad extra the one sub ordine Praedestinationis of which Eternity is the proper measure the other sub ordine Gratiae whereof Time is the measure And that God worketh fortiter in the one though not irresistibiliter as well as suaviter in the other wherein the Freewill hath his proper working also From the Result of his whole performance I was confirmed in this Opinion That we must acknowledge the work of both Grace and Free-will in the conversion of a sinner And so likewise in all other events the Consistency of the Infallibility of God's foreknowledge at least though not with any absolute but conditional Predestination with the liberty of man's will and the contingency of inferiour causes and effects These I say we must acknowledge for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I thought it bootless for me to think of comprehending it And so came the two Acta Synodalia Dordrectana to stand in my Study only to fill up a room to this day And yet see the restless curiosity of man Not many years after to wit A.D. 1632. out cometh Dr. Twiss his Vindiciae Gratiae a large Volume purposely writ against Arminius And then notwithstanding my former resolution I must needs

be medling again The respect I bore to his person and great learning and the long acquaintance I had had with him in Oxford drew me to the reading of that whole Book But from the reading of it for I read it through to a syllable I went away with many and great dissatisfactions Sundry things in that Book I took notice of which brought me into a greater dislike of his Opinion than I had before But especially these three First that he bottometh very much of his Discourse upon a very erroneous Principle which yet he seemeth to be so deeply in love with that he hath repeated it I verily believe some hundreds of times in that work to wit this That whatsoever is first in the intention is last in execution and è converso Which is an Error of that magnitude that I cannot but wonder how a person of such acuteness and subtilty of wit could possibly be deceived with it All Logicians know there is no such universal Maxim as he buildeth upon The true Maxim is but this Finis qui primus est in Intentione est ultimus in Executione In the order of final Causes and the Means used for that end the Rule holdeth perpetually But in other things it holdeth not at all or but by chance or not as a Rule and necessarily Secondly that foreseeing such Consequences would naturally and necessarily follow from his Opinion as would offend the ear of a sober Christian at the very first sound he would yet rather choose not only to admit the said harsh Consequences but professedly indeavour also to maintain them and plead hard for them in large Digressions than to recede in the least from that opinion which he had undertaken to defend Thirdly that seeing out of the sharpness of his wit a necessity of forsaking the ordinary Sublapsarian way and the Supralapsarian too as it had diversly been declared by all that had gone before him for the shunning of those Rocks which either of those ways must unavoidably cast him upon he was forced to seek out an untroden Path and to frame out of his own brain a new way like a Spider's web wrought out of her own bowels hoping by that device to salve all Absurdities could be objected to wit by making the glory of God as it is indeed the chiefest so the only end of all other his Decrees and then making all those other Decrees to be but one entire coordinate Medium conducing to that one end and so the whole subordinate to it but not any one part thereof subordinate to any other of the same Dr. Twiss should have done well to have been more sparing in imputing the studium Partium to others wherewith his own eyes though of eminent perspicacity were so strangely blindfolded that he could not discern how this his new Device and his old dearly beloved Principle like the Cadmean Sparti do mutually destroy the one the other This Relation of my pass'd thoughts having spun out to a far greater length than I intended I shall give a shorter accompt of what they now are concerning these points For which account I referr you to the following parts of Dr. Hammonds Book aforesaid where you may find them already printed And for another account at large of Bishop Sanderson's last Judgment concerning God's Concurrence or Non-concurrence with the Actions of men and the positive entity of sins of commission I referr you to his Letters already printed by his consent in my large Appendix to my Impartial inquiry into the Nature of Sin §. 68 p. 193. as far as p. 200. Sir I have rather made it my choice to transcribe all above out of the Letters of Dr. Sanderson which lie before me than venture the loss of my Originals by Post or Carrier which though not often yet sometimes fail Make use of as much or as little as you please of what I send you from himself because from his own Letters to me in the penning of his life as your own Prudence shall direct you using my name for your warranty in the account given of him as much or as little as you please too You have a performance of my promise and an obedience to your desires from North-Tidworth March 5. 1677 8 Your affectionate humble Servant Tho. Pierce THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S LETTER My worthy Friend Mr. Walton I Am heartily glad that you have undertaken to write the Life of that excellent person and both for learning and piety eminent Prelate Dr. Sanderson late Bishop of Lincoln because I know your ability to know and integrity to write truth and sure I am that the life and actions of that pious and learned Prelate will afford you matter enough for his commendation and the imitation of Posterity In order to the carrying on your intended good work you desire my assistance that I would communicate to you such particular passages of his life as were certainly known to me I confess I had the happiness to be particularly known to him for about the space of 20 years and in Oxon to injoy his conversation and his learned and pious Instructions while he was Regius Professor of Divinity there Afterwards when in the time of our late unhappy confusions he left Oxon and was retir'd into the Countrey I had the benefit of his Letters wherein with great candor and kindness he answered those doubts I propos'd and gave me that satisfaction which I neither had nor expected from some others of greater confidence but less judgment and humility Having in a Letter named two or three Books writ ex professo against the being of any original sin and that Adam by his fall transmitted some calamity only but no Crime to his Posterity The good old man was exceedingly troubled and bewailed the misery of those licentious times and seem'd to wonder save that the times were such that any should write or be permitted to publish any Error so contradictory to truth and the Doctrine of the Church of England established as he truly said by clear evidence of Scripture and the just and supreme power of this Nation both Sacred and Civil I name not the Books nor their Authors which are not unknown to learned men and I wish they had never been known because both the Doctrine and the unadvis'd Abettors of it are and shall be to me Apocryphal Another little story I must not pass in silence being an Argument of Dr. Sanderson's Piety great Ability and Judgment as a Casuist Discoursing with an honourable Person whose Piety I value more than his Nobility and Learning though both be great about a Case of Conscience concerning Oaths and Vows their Nature and Obligation in which for some particular Reasons he then desired more fully to be inform'd I commended to him Dr. Sanderson's Book De Iuramento which having read with great satisfaction he as'kd me if I thought the Doctor could be induced to write Cases of Conscience if he might have an honorary Pension

the publick Stage by occasion of the passages betwixt Mr. Mountague and his Opposers as that a dangerous Schism is like to ensue thereupon unless by the goodness of God and the Wisdome of the Church and State it be speedily prevented Those general Directions now already laid down for the preservation of the Churches Peace will not reach home for the securing of our peace and preventing farther evils as the case now standeth with us but it is needful the Church should interpose herein both by farther Explanation of her Doctrine in the points questioned and by the Exercise of her Discipline upon such persons as will not rest in her determinations And this necessity will the more appear if we consider upon what advantages the Arminian party hath and yet doth gain strength to it self viz. 1. The weakness of sundry of those Exceptions which were taken at Mr. Mountague's Answer to the Gagge by those that first openly ingaged themselves for that business which hath not only brought prejudice to their persons but also given disadvantages to the Cause even in those Exceptions which were just and material 2. The publishing of Mr. Mountague's Appeal with Allowance which both hath given confidence to sundry who before were Arminians but in secret now to walk unmasked and to profess their Opinions publickly in all Companies and that with some disdain of opposition and doth also incourage sundry others to shew an inclination to that side which they see to be countenanced in such publick sort 3. The plausibleness of Arminianism and the congruity it hath in sundry Points with the Principles of corrupt Nature and of carnal Reason For it is a wonderful tickling to flesh and blood to have the powers of Nature magnified and to hear it self flattered as if she carried the greatest stroke in the work of Salvation especially when these soothings are conveyed under the pretence of vindicating the dispensations of God's Providence from the Imputation of Injustice 4. The harshness of that Opinion which Calvin and Beza are said to have held and many Learned men in our Church are said to have followed concerning the Decrees of Reprobation and Election without respect had to Adam in the one or to Christ in the other whereas the inconveniencies which either do ensue or seem to ensue upon the Opinion may be fairly waved another way and yet without Arminianism 5. The manifold cunning of the Arminians to advance their own party as viz. 1. In pleading for a liberty for every man to abound in his own sense in things undetermined by the Church that so they may spread their own Tenets the more freely whereas yet it is too apparent by their writings and speeches that their intent and indeavour is to take the benefit of this liberty themselves but not to allow it to those that dissent from them 2. In bragging out some of their private Tenets as if they were the received established Doctrine of the Church of England by forcing the words of the Articles or Common Prayer Book to a sense which appeareth not to have been intended therein as Mr. Mountague hath done in the Point of falling from grace Whereas the contrary Tenet viz. of the final perseverance of the righteous in grace and faith may be by as strong evidence every way and by as natural deducement collected out of the said Books as shall be easily proved if it be required 3. In seeking to derive envy upon the opposite Opinions by delivering them in terms odious and of ill and suspicious sound as viz. irresistibility of grace irrespective decree c. whereas the soberer Divines of the opposite party ordinarily do not use those terms nor yet well approve of them unless understood cum grano salis But themselves rather are so exorbitant in their phrases and terms as it were well if a good quantity of Salt could so correct some of them as to render them if not wholesome at least savoury 4. Which is the most unjust and uncharitable course of all the rest and whereby yet I verily think they have prevailed more than by all the rest in seeking to draw the persons of those that dissent from them into dislike with the Sate as if they were Puritans or Disciplinarians or at least that way affected Whereas 1. The Questions in debate are such as no way touch upon Puritanism either off or on 2. Many of the Dissenters have as freely and clearly declared their Judgments by preaching and writing against all Puritanism and Puritanical Principles both before and since they were interessed in these Controversies as the stoutest Arminian in England hath done I am not able to pronounce absolutely neither of other men but so far as hath occurred to my observation I dare say it I find more written against the Puritans and their Opinions and with more real satisfaction and upon no less solid grounds by those that have and do dissent from the Arminian Tenets than by those that have or do maintain them Could that blessed Arch-bishop Whitgift or the modest and learned Hooker have ever thought so much as by dream that men concurring with them in Opinion should for some of these very Opinions be called Puritans III. Series Decretorum Dei Sithence most of the differences now in question do arise from the different conceits which men have concerning the Decrees of God about man's Salvation and the execution of those Decrees it could not but be a work of singular use for the composing of present and the preventing of farther differences if some learned and moderate men all prejudice and partiality laid aside would travel with faithfulness and sobriety in this Argument viz. to order those Decrees consonantly to the tenor of Scripture and the Doctrine of the ancient Church as to avoid those inconveniencies into which the extreme Opinions on both hands run For considering often with my self that the abettors of either extreme are confirmed in their Opinions not so much from the assurance of their own grounds as from the inconveniencies that attend the opposite extreme I have ever thought that a middle way between both might be fairer and safer to pitch upon than either extreme What therefore upon some agitation of these Points both in Argument with others upon occasion and in my private and serious thoughts I have conceived concerning the ordering of God's Decrees desiring ever to keep my self within the bands of Christian sobriety and modesty I have at the request of some Friends here distinctly laid down not intending hereby to prescribe unto other men nor yet to tie my self to mine own present Judgment if I shall see cause to alter it but only to present to the abler Judgments of some learned Friends that way which hath hitherto given me better satisfaction than any other and which I have not yet observed to be subject to so great difficulties and inconveniencies neither in the substance of the matter nor in the manner of explication as the