He was son of William Crosse of
Dunster,
Somerset. He 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
First English Civil War, he was nominated in 1643 one of the
Westminster Assembly, and took the
Solemn League and Covenant. In 1648, submitting to the
parliamentarian visitors, he was appointed by the committee for the reformation of the
University of Oxford to succeed Dr.
Robert Sanderson as
Regius Professor of Divinity. He declined the post, however, and soon afterwards was instituted as vicar of
Chew Magna in Somerset. At the Restoration he conformed, and as there was nobody to claim his living, he retained it till his death on 12 December 1683.
Anthony à Wood says he was a noted philosopher and theologian, an able preacher, and well versed in the
Church Fathers and
scholastic philosophers. He had a controversy with
Joseph Glanvill, on the subject of
Aristotelian philosophy. This became sharp when Crosse accused Glanvill, and the
Royal Society of which he was a Fellow, of being "downright atheists", based on their experimental philosophy. Crosse then passed the baton to
Henry Stubbe, who became a very persistent critic of the Society. A book which Crosse 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. ==Works==