Sanderson’s Virtues - 1678
Sir Izaak Walton.
Introduction
Author of The Complete Angler Izaak Walton also wrote short biographies of five of his contemporaries: John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Hooker, Robert Sanderson, and Henry Wotton. While preparing the biography of Dr. Sanderson, formerly bishop of Lincoln, Walton contacted Sanderson’s successor Thomas Barlow. Barlow responded in a letter dated this day, 10 May, 1678, furnishing a few anecdotes that showed Sanderson’s learning and character.
Quote
“My Worthy Friend, Mr. Walton,
“I am heartily glad, that you have undertaken to write the life of that excellent person….Dr. Sanderson, late Bishop of Lincoln….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.…
“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 [Robert Boyle] (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 asked me,—‘If I thought the Doctor could be induced to write Cases of Conscience, if he might have an honorary pension allowed him to furnish him with books for that purpose?’ I told him I believed he would: And, in a letter to the Doctor, told him what great satisfaction that honourable person, and many more, had reaped by reading his book De Juramento; and asked him ‘whether he would be pleased, for the benefit of the Church, to write some tract of Cases of Conscience;’ He replied, ‘That he was glad that any had received any benefit by his books:’ and added further, ‘That if any future tract of his could bring such benefit to any, as we seemed to say his former had done, he would willingly, though without any Pension, set about that work.’ Having received this answer, that honourable person, before mentioned, did, by my hands, return £50 to the good Doctor, whose condition then (as most good men’s at that time were) was but low; and he presently revised, finished, and published that excellent book, De Conscientia: a book little in bulk, but not so if we consider the benefit an intelligent reader may receive by it…..
“Your affectionate friend,
“Thomas Lincoln”
Walton, Izaak. Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson, ed. Thomas Zouch. York: Wilson, Spence, and Mawman, 1796.