He did, for about a year’s time, continue to read his matchless Lectures, which were first de Juramento, a point very difficult, and at that time very dangerous to be handled as it ought to be.  But this learned man, as he was eminently furnished with abilities to satisfy the consciences of men upon that important subject; so he wanted not courage to assert the true obligation of Oaths in a degenerate age, when men had made perjury a main part of their religion.  How much the learned world stands obliged to him for these, and his following Lectures de Conscientia, I shall not attempt to declare, as being very sensible that the best pens must needs fall short in the commendation of them:  so that I shall only add, that they continued to this day, and will do for ever, as a complete standard for the resolution of the most material doubts in Casuistical Divinity.  And therefore I proceed to tell the Reader, that about the time of his reading those Lectures,—­the King being then prisoner in the Isle of Wight,—­the Parliament had sent the Covenant, the Negative Oath, and I know not what more, to be taken by the Doctor of the Chair, and all Heads of Houses; and all other inferior Scholars, of what degree soever, were all to take these Oaths by a fixed day; and those that did not, to abandon their College, and the University too, within twenty-four hours after the beating of a drum; for if they remained longer, they were to be proceeded against as spies.

Dr. Laud, then Archbishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Strafford, and many others, had been formerly murdered by this wicked Parliament; but the King yet was not:  and the University had yet some faint hopes that in a Treaty then in being, or pretended to be suddenly, there might be such an agreement made between King and Parliament, that the Dissenters in the University might both preserve their consciences and subsistence which they then enjoyed by their Colleges.

[Sidenote:  A mistaken hope]

[Sidenote:  Manifesto to Parliament.]

And being possessed of this mistaken hope, that the Parliament were not yet grown so merciless as not to allow manifest reason for their not submitting to the enjoined Oaths, the University appointed twenty delegates to meet, consider, and draw up a Manifesto to the Parliament, why they could not take those oaths but by violation of their consciences:  and of these delegates Dr. Sheldon,—­late Archbishop of Canterbury,—­Dr. Hammond,—­Dr. Sanderson, Dr. Morley,—­now Bishop of Winchester,—­and that most honest and as judicious Civil Lawyer, Dr. Zouch,[17] were a part; the rest I cannot now name:  but the whole number of the delegates requested Dr. Zouch to draw up the Law part, and give it to Dr. Sanderson:  and he was requested to methodise and add what referred to reason and conscience, and put it into form.  He yielded to their desires and did so.  And then, after they had been read in a full Convocation, and allowed of, they were printed