Robert Sanderson
1587–1663
Regius Professor at Oxford; great Anglican casuist; later Bishop of Lincoln.
Biography
Of Lincoln College Oxford and Regius Professor of Divinity (1642), Sanderson was the great moderate Anglican casuist of the seventeenth century — De Obligatione Conscientiae and De Iuramenti Promissorii Obligatione (both 1647, his Oxford lectures of 1646) are the Reformed Episcopalian counterpart to William Ames's Cases of Conscience and stand among the most rigorous treatments of conscience in any seventeenth-century language. Named to the Westminster Assembly but he refused to sit out of episcopal and royalist loyalty. Deprived of the Regius Chair in 1648 for refusing the Engagement Oath, he lived in retirement at Boothby Pagnell (Lincolnshire) until the Restoration brought him to the see of Lincoln (1660) for the last three years of his life. Izaak Walton wrote his Life (1678). Died in 1663.
Principal works
- De Obligatione Conscientiae (1647)
- De Iuramenti Promissorii Obligatione (1647)
Named in the ordinance
The 1643 ordinance that summoned the Assembly named some 121 divines. A number — chiefly episcopalians and royalists who heeded the King's proclamation forbidding the Assembly — never took their seats or sat only briefly; a few were later expelled. They are listed here for completeness as part of the originally-summoned roster.