ROBERT SANDERSON.
May 6, 1619.
And not long after this resignation, he was by the then Bishop of
York,[10] or the King _sede vacante_, made Prebend of the Collegiate
Church of Southwell in that Diocese; and shortly after of Lincoln by
the Bishop of that See.
[Sidenote: Marriage]
And being now resolved to set down his rest in a quiet privacy at
Boothby Pannell, and looking back with some sadness upon his removal
from his general acquaintance left in Oxford, and the peculiar
pleasures of a University life; he could not but think the want of
society would render this of a country Parson the more uncomfortable,
by reason of that want of conversation; and therefore he did put
on some faint purposes to marry. For he had considered, that though
marriage be cumbered with more worldly care than a single life; yet a
complying and a prudent wife changes those very cares into so mutual a
content, as makes them become like the sufferings of St. Paul, Colos.
i. 24, which he would not have wanted because they occasioned his
rejoicing in them. And he, having well considered this, and observed
the secret unutterable joys that children beget in parents, and
the mutual pleasures and contented trouble of their daily care and
constant endeavours to bring up those little images of themselves, so
as to make them as happy as all those cares and endeavours can make
them: he, having considered all this, the hopes of such happiness
turned his faint purposes into a positive resolution to marry. And he
was so happy as to obtain Anne, the daughter of Henry Nelson, Bachelor
in Divinity, then Rector of Haugham, in the County of Lincoln, a man
of noted worth and learning. And the Giver of all good things was so
good to him, as to give him such a wife as was suitable to his own
desires; a wife, that made his life happy by being always content when
he was cheerful; that divided her joys with him, and abated of his
sorrow, by bearing a part of that burden; a wife that demonstrated her
affection by a cheerful obedience to all his desires, during the whole
course of his life; and at his death too, for she outlived him.
[Sidenote: A country parson]
And in this Boothby Pannell, he either found or made his parishioners
peaceable, and complying with him in the decent and regular service
of God. And thus his Parish, his patron, and he lived together in
a religious love and a contented quietness; he not troubling their
thoughts by preaching high and useless notions, but such plain truths
as were necessary to be known, believed and practised, in order to
their salvation. And their assent to what he taught was testified by
such a conformity to his doctrine, as declared they believed and loved
him. For he would often say, "That, without the last, the most evident
truths--heard as from an enemy, or an evil liver--either are not, or
are at least the less effectual; and do usually rather harden than
convince the hearer."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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