weakened him, yet it made him rather indisposed than sick, and did no
way disable him from studying--indeed too much.--In this decay of his
strength, but not of his memory or reason,--for this distemper works
not upon the understanding,--he made his last Will, of which I shall
give some account for confirmation of what hath been said, and what I
think convenient to be known, before I declare his death and burial.

He did in his last Will,[30] give an account of his faith and
persuasion in point of religion, and Church-government, in these very
words:

"I, Robert Sanderson, Doctor of Divinity, an unworthy Minister of
Jesus Christ, and, by the providence of God, Bishop of Lincoln, being
by the long continuance of an habitual distemper brought to a great
bodily weakness and faintness of spirits, but--by the great mercy of
God--without any bodily pain otherwise, or decay of understanding,
do make this my Will and Testament,--written all with my own
hand,--revoking all former Wills by me heretofore made, if any such
shall be found. First, I commend my soul into the hands of Almighty
God, as of a faithful Creator, which I humbly beseech him mercifully
to accept, looking upon it, not as it is in itself,--infinitely
polluted with sin,--but as it is redeemed and purged with the precious
blood of his only beloved Son, and my most sweet Saviour Jesus Christ;
in confidence of whose merits and mediation alone it is, that I cast
myself upon the mercy of God for the pardon of my sins, and the hopes
of eternal life. And here I do profess, that as I have lived, so I
desire, and--by the grace of God--resolve, to die in the communion
of the Catholic Church of Christ, and a true son of the Church
of England: which, as it stands by law established, to be both in
doctrine and worship agreeable to the word of God, and in the most,
and most material points of both conformable to the faith and practice
of the godly Churches of Christ in the primitive and purer times, I do
firmly believe: led so to do, not so much from the force of custom and
education,--to which the greatest part of mankind owe their particular
different persuasions in point of Religion,--as upon the clear
evidence of truth and reason, after a serious and impartial
examination of the grounds, as well of Popery as Puritanism, according
to that measure of understanding, and those opportunities which God
hath afforded me: and herein I am abundantly satisfied, that the
schism w