Arthur Bury

Arthur Bury, D.D. (1624-1714?) was an English college head and Anglican theologian of controversial views. His 1690 antitrinitarian work, The Naked Gospel, first published anonymously, was commanded to be burnt at Oxford, and, in a complex sequence of events involving legal action, Bury lost his position as Rector of Exeter College, Oxford after being expelled initially in 1689.

William Prideaux Courtney in the Dictionary of National Biography stated that "His object was to free the gospel from the additions and corruptions of later ages, and he sums up its doctrines 'in two precepts—believe and repent."Jonathan Israel characterizes Bury as a “crypto-Socinian”; he is now often claimed as a Unitarian sympathizer, with a strong interest in the monotheism of Islam. Bury was in fact in the tradition of latitudinarianism and Protestant irenicism, and the early Unitarian Thomas Firmin had a hand in the publication, which suggested that a minimal set of articles of Christian faith should suffice; but he included Arianism as an acceptable position for salvation.

He was the son of the Rev. John Bury (1580–1667), and matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, on 5 April 1639, aged 15. He took his degree of B.A. on 29 November 1642, was elected a Petreian fellow of his college on 30 June 1643, and become full fellow on 6 May 1645. A royalist, he refused to submit to the parliamentary visitors of the university, and took refuge with his father in Devon. At the Restoration of 1660 he was restored to his fellowship. In 1666 the rectorship at Exeter College became vacant, and Bury was elected (27 May), on the recommendation of Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon and with heavy-handed support from Charles II. On 22 June in the same year he took the degree of B.D. and five days later became D.D.

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