[1] In 1651 he received presbyterian ordination; he became proctor also in the next year, 1652; but in 1655 he resigned his fellowship and left the university, because the statutes required him to take the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, and his conscientious scruples made this impossible.
[2] His ability brought him into communication with Richard Cumberland, his contemporary at Cambridge, and with William Whiston; but, inheriting a small property at Loddington, Northamptonshire, he quietly pursued his mathematical studies in that county to the end of his life.
[2] In 1695 appeared Tractatus tres; quorum qui prior Ante-Nicenismus dicitur, a Unitarian answer to George Bull's Nicene writings, the first two of these being by Clerke and the third anonymous.
[6] Clerke's position as an original theologian is also questioned; it has been thought he merely reproduced Daniel Zwicker's arguments.
[2] Clerke did not suffer the fate of Socinians William Freke (1694) and John Smith (1695) who were forced to recant.