nd, 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 twenty years; and,
in Oxon, to enjoy 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 retired into the country, I had the benefit of his
letters; wherein, with great candour and kindness, he answered those
doubts I proposed, 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 seemed 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 unadvised abettors of it are, and shall be,
to me apocryphal.

[Sidenote: "De Conscientia"]

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[1] (whose piety I value more
than his nobility and learning, though both be great) about a case of
conscience concerning oath and vows, their nature and obligation; in
which, for some particular reasons, he then desired more fully to
be informed; I commended to him Dr. Sanderson's book "De Juramento;"
which having read, with great satisfaction, he aske