Burton, Edward

BURTON, EDWARD: Church of England patristic scholar and church historian; b. at Shrewsbury Feb. 13, 1794; d. at Ewelme (10 m. s.e. of Oxford) Jan. 19, 1836. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford (B.A., 1815; M.A., 1818; D.D., 1829); became curate of Pettenhall, Staffordshire, 1815; went to the Continent in 1818 and worked in the libraries of France and Italy; took up his residence at Oxford 1824, and in 1829 became regius professor of divinity. Among the more important of his works are: Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ (Oxford, 1826); Inquiry into the Heresies of the Apostolic Age (Bampton lectures, 1829); The Greek Testament with English Notes (2 vols., 1831); Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the Doctrine of the Trinity and of the Divinity of the Holy Ghost (1831); Lectures on the Ecclesiastical History of the First Three Centuries (2 vols., 1831–33). His edition of the Historia ecclesiastica of Eusebius appeared after his death (text, 1838; again 1856 and 1872; notes by Heinichen, Leipsic, 1840).

Bibliography: His collected works, with memoir, were published at Oxford in 5 vols., 1846.