Thomas Bradbury (minister)

He preached his first sermon on 14 June 1696, and went to reside as assistant and domestic tutor with Thomas Whitaker, minister of the independent congregation at Call Lane, Leeds.

He was ordained 10 July 1707 by ministers of different denominations; his confession of faith on the occasion (which reached a fifth edition in 1729) showed uncompromising Calvinism, expressed entirely in words of scripture.

Bradbury took part in the weekly dissenting lectureships, delivering a series at the Weighhouse on the duty of singing (1708), and a sermon before the Societies for Reformation of Morals (1708).

[1] Bradbury boasted of being the first to proclaim George I, which he did on Sunday, 1 August 1714, being apprised, while in his pulpit, of the death of Queen Anne by the agreed signal of a handkerchief.

Another story is to the effect that when, on 24 September, the dissenting ministers went in their black gowns with an address to the new king, a courtier asked, "Pray, sir, is this a funeral?"

With the reference of the Exeter controversy to the judgment of the dissenting ministers of London, a large part of Bradbury's vehemence passed from the sphere of politics to that of theology.

The origin of the dispute arose during the life of James Peirce (1674–1726), an intellectual leader of dissent against the positions of Edward Wells and William Nicholls.

After much negotiation the whole body of London dissenting ministers of the three denominations was convened at Salters' Hall to consider a draft letter of advice to Exeter.

At the second meeting, Tuesday, 24 February, Bradbury moved a preamble to the letter of advice, embodying a declaration of the orthodoxy of the conference, in words taken from the Assembly's catechism.

[3] Principal John Chalmers, of King's College, Old Aberdeen, who was present at the third meeting, and in sympathy with Bradbury's side, reported to Edmund Calamy that he had never seen nor heard of such strange conduct and management.

But most of the pamphleteers passed him by as an angry man, to aim at William Tong, Benjamin Robinson, Jeremiah Smith, and Thomas Reynolds, four presbyterian ministers who had issued a whip for the Salters' Hall conference in the subscribing interest, and who subsequently published a joint defence of the doctrine of the Trinity.

[3] In 1720, an attempt was made to oust Bradbury from the Pinners' Hall lectureship; in the same year he started an anti-Arian Wednesday lecture at Fetter Lane.

This arrangement, which has helped to create the false impression that at Salters' Hall the presbyterians and independents took opposite sides as denominations, was made 27 November 1728, Peter continuing as his brother's colleague (he probably died about 1730, as Jacob Fowler succeeded him in 1731).