Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Crosse, Robert
CROSSE, ROBERT (1606–1683), puritan divine, son of William Crosse of Dunster, Somersetshire, entered Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1621, obtained a fellowship in 1627, graduated in arts, and in 1637 proceeded B.D. Siding with the presbyterians on the outbreak of the civil war, he was nominated in 1643 one of the assembly of divines, and took the covenant. In 1648, submitting to the parliamentarian visitors, he was appointed by the committee for the reformation of the university to succeed Dr. Sanderson as regius professor of divinity. He declined the post, however, and soon afterwards was instituted to the rich vicarage of Chew-Magna in his native county. At the Restoration he conformed, and as there was nobody to claim his living, he retained it till his death on 12 Dec. 1683. Wood says 'he was accounted a noted philosopher and divine, an able preacher, and well versed in the fathers and schoolmen.'
He had a controversy with Joseph Glanvill F. R. S., on the subject of the Aristotelian philosophy. A book which he wrote against Glanvill was rejected by the licensers, but Glanvill, having obtained the contents of it, sent it in a letter to Dr. Nathaniel Ingelo, who had a hundred copies of it privately printed under the title of the 'Chew Gazette.' Afterwards Crosse wrote ballads against Glanvill with the object of ridiculing him and the Royal Society. He was also the author of 'Λόγου ἀλογία, seu Exercitatio Theologica de Insipientia Rationis humanae, Gratia Christi destitutae, in Rebus Fidei ; in 1 Cor. ii. 14,' Oxford, 1656, 4to.
[Wood's Athenae Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 122; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.]