Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess, “a pious, learned, and able scholar, a good disputant, a good tutor, an eminent preacher, a sound and orthodox divine,” was born to the son of a schoolmaster at Watford, Hertfordshire. He entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1623, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1627. He then transferred to Emmanuel College, where he was elected to a fellowship, and earned a Master of Arts degree in 1630.
Burgess joined the Westminster Assembly of Divines, where he became known for his theological astuteness and piety. During his years in London, he preached to Parliament on at least six occasions; these sermons show a thoroughly biblical emphasis, an emphasis on maintaining church discipline, and an abhorrence of antinomian errors. In 1645, he replaced the expelled Thomas Crane as vicar of the Guildhall church of St. Lawrence Jewry, where he established a congregational presbytery. In 1647, he signed the Testimony of the London Presbyterian ministers against the toleration of heresy. Wherever he went, he was esteemed as an eminent preacher as well as a solid divine.
During a fifteen-year span (1646-1661), Burgess wrote at least a dozen books, based mainly on his sermons and lectures. His writings reveal a scholarly acquaintance with Aristotle, Seneca, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. He made a judicious use of Greek and Latin quotations, while he still reasoned in the plain style of Puritan preaching. In Burgess, cultured scholar and experimental preacher combined to produce astute, warm, devotional writing.
Several of Burgess’s major works have a strong polemic emphasis. His first major treatise, Vindiciae Legis (1646), based on twenty-nine lectures given at Lawrence Jewry, vindicated the Puritan view of the moral law and the covenants of works and grace in opposition to Roman Catholics, Arminians, Socinians, and especially, Antinomians. Two years later,
Burgess was ejected by the Uniformity Act of 1662. He retired to Tamworth, Staffordshire, where he attended the parish church of his friend, Samuel Langley, a godly but conformist minister, until his death in 1664.
Burgess has been seriously underestimated in church history. He is one of only a few of the main Puritan authors who did not have a nineteenth century reprint of their works. Many of his books are worthy of being reprinted today.
Books Authored by Burgess:
Spiritual Refining: The Anatomy of True and False Conversion, Vol. 1
Spiritual Refining: The Anatomy of True and False Conversion, Vol. 2
