1. George Bull was an English theologian and Bishop of St David's.
18 Facts About George Bull
1. 2.
George Bull then studied under William Thomas, rector of Ubley and a puritan divine; Bull was more influenced by his son Samuel Thomas, who directed Bull to read Richard Hooker, Henry Hammond, and Jeremy Taylor.
3.
On leaving Thomas, Bull applied to Robert Skinner, the ejected bishop of Oxford, for episcopal ordination, and was ordained by him deacon and priest the same day, aged 21.
4.
George Bull used to spend two months every year at Oxford and on his way there and back he visited Sir William Master of Abbey House, Cirencester.
5.
George Bull met in this way the rector Alexander Gregory, whose daughter Bridget he married on Ascension Day, 1658.
6.
George Bull was rector of Siddington for twenty-seven years, and encountered opposition from dissenting parishioners.
7.
George Bull started to tour his diocese, but illness detained him at Brecknock, where he resided: his son-in-law, Mr Stevens, and Mr Powell went as his commissioners, and during the whole period he was failing.
8.
George Bull has a high place among Anglican theologians, and as a defender of the doctrine of the Trinity was held in high esteem even by Roman Catholic controversialists in Europe.
9.
George Bull adopted an anti-Calvinist stance both in Defensio and Harmonia Apostolica.
10.
George Bull wrote four major theological treatises in Latin, one on justification and three on the Trinity.
11.
George Bull wrote his first book, the Harmonia Apostolica, in an attempt to reconcile the apparent discrepancies between St Paul and the Epistle of James on the relationship of faith and good works in Christian justification.
12.
George Bull advocated the principle that Paul the Apostle ought to be interpreted by St James, not St James by St Paul, on the ground that St James wrote later, and was presumed acquainted with St Paul's teaching.
13.
Bishop George Morley wrote a pastoral letter to his clergy against Bull; Thomas Barlow lectured against him at Oxford; Thomas Tully wrote an answer, in which he is said to have been assisted by Morley and Barlow; Charles Gataker, son of Thomas Gataker, Thomas Truman and John Toombes, nonconformists, wrote against him.
14.
George Bull's advocacy of the necessity of good works caused his adversaries to insinuate that he was a Socinian.
15.
George Bull's move onto the polemical ground of trinitarianism was therefore prompted by the need to clarify his position, in Defensio Fidei Nicaenae.
16.
George Bull took upon himself to prove that they did, and concentrated on the opinions of the ante-Nicene fathers, excluding other controversies.
17.
Episcopius held that the Nicene fathers did not consider a belief in our Lord's true and proper divinity as an indispensable term of catholic communion; George Bull wrote the Judicium to prove that they did.
18.
Bossuet was pleased with this work, and George Bull had congratulations from the clergy of France for defending the divinity of Christ.