The Life of Dr. Sanderson, Late Bishop of Lincoln. Written by Izaak Walton. to which is added, Some short Tracts of Cases of Conscience, written by the said Bishop

London, Printed for Richard Marriott, 1678. FIRST EDITION. 12mo, 175 x 108 mms., pp. [240], recently and unsympathetically recased in quarter buckram, marbled boards; lacks portrait. A Calvinist, Bishop Robert Sanderson, (1587-1663) made an impact his contemporaries, including Charles I, as Walton records, "I carry my ears to hear other Preachers', said the king, 'but I carry my Conscience to hear Mr. Sanderson, and to act accordingly." ONDB records, "A doctrinal Calvinist, Sanderson had tried to resolve the controversy created by Richard Mountague's books in the mid-1620s by offering a slight alteration of the sublapsarian doctrine of predestination. Nevertheless, he insisted that the Church of England held that divine act of election was entirely gratuitous and to suggest otherwise was 'quarter-Pelagian and Arminian novelty' (Works, 5.277). Marginal notes condemning the Arminians and 'their Semipelagian subtilties' continued to appear in all editions of his sermons until 1657, and vigorous efforts in the late 1650s by Henry Hammond, Thomas Pierce, and others to change his mind had little success. Sanderson's soteriology, his denunciations of usury and idleness, and his support for the reformation of manners show that he had much in common with puritans. Izaak Walton's biography of Sanderson wholly ignores his Calvinism, his agreement with puritans on many issues, and his quarrels with Hammond and the churchmanship that Hammond and his friends represented. However, throughout his long career he rejected puritan arguments against ceremonies, probably in part because of his observation of the actions of John Cotton and his followers at nearby Boston. Sanderson, deeply concerned to retain protestant unity against Rome, was an anti-puritan in the Whitgiftian mould, an excellent example of the way 'that even men who shared great tracts of ideological terrain with the Puritans could end up hating them with a passion' (Lake, 115)." I suspect that the number of scholars who would be familiar with and under stand the issues, doctrines, and beliefs in those few sentences would be very feew.

SANDERSON (Robert) . WALTON (Isaac): - The Life of Dr. Sanderson, Late Bishop of Lincoln. Written by Izaak Walton. to which is added, Some short Tracts of Cases of Conscience, written by the said Bishop