Anthony Burges

Anthony Burges or Burgess (died 1664) was a Nonconformist English clergyman, a prolific preacher and writer.

Life

He was a son of a schoolmaster at Watford, and not related to Cornelius Burgess or John Burges, his predecessor at Sutton Coldfield. He studied at St. John's College, Cambridge from 1623.^[1] He became a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.^[2] At Emmanuel he was tutor to John Wallis^[3]^[4]

From 1635 he was Rector at Sutton Coldfield; during the First English Civil War, he took refuge in Coventry, and lectured the parliamentary garrison. He was a member of the Westminster Assembly. He lost his position as Rector in 1662, after the Restoration, despite John Hacket's urging to conform, and then and lived at Tamworth.^[4]^[5]

He published various separate sermons, including a funeral sermon on Thomas Blake, and:

Vindiciae Legis, a Vindication of the Moral Law . . . (against Antinomians) in twenty-nine lectures at Lawrence Jury,' 1646.
The True Doctrine of Justification Asserted and Vindicated from the Errors of Papists, Arminians, Socinians, and Antinomians, in thirty lectures at Lawrence Jury, 1648.
Spiritual Refining (120 sermons), 1652.
A Treatise of Justification, Including On the Natural Righteousness of God, and Imputed Righteousness of Christ (1654)
Expository Sermons (145) on the 17th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, 1656
The Scripture Directory ... a Practical Commentary upon the whole third chapter of the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, to which is annexed the Godly and Natural Man's Choice, &c., 1659.
Doctrine of Original Sin asserted, 1659.^[4]

Two volumes of his major work on justification appeared, followed by works of the 1650s on grace and original sin.^[6]

^ Burgess, Anthony in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
^ Concise Dictionary of National Biography, under "Anthony Burgess".
^ Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (1965), p. 108.
^ ^a ^b ^c s:Burgess, Anthony (DNB00)
^ History of Sutton Coldfield A to D
^ http://www.rtrc.net/westminster/critical/booktable.htm

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Burgess, Anthony". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.