Burgess, Henry

BURGESS, HENRY: Church of England clergyman and scholar; b. in Newington, London, Jan. 29, 1808; d. Feb. 10, 1886. He studied at the Dissenting College, Stepney; after graduation (1830) was for a time a Baptist minister, but decided to join the Church of England in 1849, was ordained deacon 1850, and priest 1851; became curate at Blackburn 1851; perpetual curate of Clifton Reynes, Buckinghamshire, 1854; vicar of St. Andrew, Whittlesea, Cambridgeshire, 1861. His principal works were translations from the Syriac of the Festal Letters of St. Athanasius (London, 1852) and of Select Metrical Hymns and Homilies of Ephraem Syrus, with an introduction and historical and philological notes (1853); The Reformed Church of England in its Principles and their Legitimate Development (1869); Essays, Biblical and Ecclesiastical, relating chiefly to the authority and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures (1873); The Art of Preaching and the Composition of Sermons (1881). He edited The Clerical Journal 1854–68, The Journal of Sacred Literature 1854–62, and the second edition of Kitto's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1856).