Arthur Bury

Who was Arthur Bury?

Arthur Bury, D.D. 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.