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.
[3] 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;[4][5] but he included Arianism as an acceptable position for salvation.
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.
The Visitor was now Jonathan Trelawny,[7] and he ordered the restoration of the man in question, but when the bishop held a formal visitation, Bury tried to shut the gates against him.
[1] The treatise issued in 1690, under the title of The Naked Gospel, by a true son of the Church of England, was discovered to be the work of Bury, and for some passages in it a charge of Socinianism was brought up against him.
[1] Bury had immediate support from James Parkinson, who in Fire's Continued at Oxford (1690) argued that he was a target of political venom from Tories.
On 30 August Bury had printed a letter of fifteen pages, The Fires continued at Oxford, in defence of his conduct, and in 1691 he brought out, under his own name, a second edition of The Naked Gospel.