Bradford was ordained deacon and priest in 1690, and in the spring of the following year was elected by the governors of St. Thomas's Hospital the minister of their church in Southwark.

He soon received the lectureship of St. Mary-le-Bow, and was tutor to the two grandsons of Archbishop John Tillotson, with whom he resided at Carlisle House, Lambeth.

In November 1693 Tillotson collated Bradford to the rectory of St. Mary-le-Bow; he then resigned his minor ecclesiastical preferments, but soon after accepted the lectureship of All Hallows, Bread Street.

These, with a ninth sermon preached in his own church in January 1700, were issued with other Boyle lectures delivered between 1691 and 1732, in A Defence of Natural and Revealed Religion, &c. 3 vols., London, 1739.

His son, the Revd William Bradford, died on 15 July 1728, aged thirty-two, when he was archdeacon of Rochester and vicar of Newcastle upon Tyne.