[Sidenote:  His Will]

Before I give an account of Dr. Sanderson’s last sickness, I desire to tell the Reader that he was of a healthful constitution, cheerful and mild, of an even temper, very moderate in his diet, and had had little sickness, till some few years before his death; but was then every winter punished with a diarrhoea, which left not till warm weather returned and removed it:  and this distemper did, as he grew older, seize him oftener, and continue longer with him.  But though it weakened him, yet it made him rather indisposed than sick, and did no way disable him from studying—­indeed too much.—­In this decay of his strength, but not of his memory or reason,—­for this distemper works not upon the understanding,—­he made his last Will, of which I shall give some account for confirmation of what hath been said, and what I think convenient to be known, before I declare his death and burial.

He did in his last Will,[30] give an account of his faith and persuasion in point of religion, and Church-government, in these very words: 

“I, Robert Sanderson, Doctor of Divinity, an unworthy Minister of Jesus Christ, and, by the providence of God, Bishop of Lincoln, being by the long continuance of an habitual distemper brought to a great bodily weakness and faintness of spirits, but—­by the great mercy of God—­without any bodily pain otherwise, or decay of understanding, do make this my Will and Testament,—­written all with my own hand,—­revoking all former Wills by me heretofore made, if any such shall be found.  First, I commend my soul into the hands of Almighty God, as of a faithful Creator, which I humbly beseech him mercifully to accept, looking upon it, not as it is in itself,—­infinitely polluted with sin,—­but as it is redeemed and purged with the precious blood of his only beloved Son, and my most sweet Saviour Jesus Christ; in confidence of whose merits and mediation alone it is, that I cast myself upon the mercy of God for the pardon of my sins, and the hopes of eternal life.  And here I do profess, that as I have lived, so I desire, and—­by the grace of God—­resolve, to die in the communion of the Catholic Church of Christ, and a true son of the Church of England:  which, as it stands by law established, to be both in doctrine and worship agreeable to the word of God, and in the most, and most material points of both conformable to the faith and practice of the godly Churches of Christ in the primitive and purer times, I do firmly believe:  led so to do, not so much from the force of custom and education,—­to which the greatest part of mankind owe their particular different persuasions in point of Religion,—­as upon the clear evidence of truth and reason, after a serious and impartial examination of the grounds, as well of Popery as Puritanism, according to that measure of understanding, and those opportunities which God hath afforded me:  and herein I am abundantly satisfied, that the schism