George Bugg (1769–1851) was an

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

deacon and curate for several churches in England and a

scriptural geologist Scriptural geologists (or Mosaic geologists) were a heterogeneous group of writers in the early nineteenth century, who claimed "the primacy of Biblical literalism, literalistic biblical exegesis" and a short Young Earth creationism, Young Earth ti ...

who wrote a two volume book called ''Scriptural Geology''.

Biography

Bugg was baptized in the Anglican church in Stathern,

Leicestershire Leicestershire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire to the north, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire to the south-east, Warw ...

. His mother died when he was only nine. In his late teens or early twenties he converted to Christianity, being convinced that "the scriptures are strictly and literally true". From 1786 he was tutored by Rev. Thomas Baxter and then entered

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College, formally the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge, is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge, founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch L ...

in 1791, earning his B.A. degree in 1794. Bugg married Mary Ann Adams in 1804, by whom he had four daughters and one son. She died in 1815 after only eleven years of marriage. In 1816 and 1843 Bugg wrote two books on baptism and regeneration to refute the view of Mant and Pusey. Bugg considered their views to be identical with Roman Catholic teaching and therefore a threat to the doctrine of

Justification by faith (or simply ), meaning justification by faith alone, is a soteriological doctrine in Christian theology commonly held to distinguish the Lutheranism, Lutheran and Reformed tradition, Reformed traditions of Protestantism, among others, from th ...

. This was part of the

Tractarian movement The Oxford Movement was a theological movement of high-church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the Uni ...

in the Anglican Church in the 1830s and 1840s. Volume one of Bugg's most important work, ''Scriptural Geology'', was published in 1826 and the second volume came out the next year, together they contained more than 717 pages. During his career he was discharged from three church positions due to complaints from some members. Besides this, several members of his family died in a short time and he was often ill. When he was living with his daughter Elizabeth in Hull, Bugg died on 15 August 1851. During the 1820s, only some Scriptural geologists held a decidedly antagonistic attitude towards the new geology. But in the 1830s, when old-earth geology was endorsed without reservation as a substitute to the Genesis record, much disagreement arose. The implicit rejection of the Bible's eyewitness account was thought condescending, sidetracking a typical Bible student from gaining a knowledge of nature from the Bible.

Selected publications

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Notes

References

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bugg, George 1769 births 1851 deaths 18th-century Anglican deacons British Christian creationists Christian Young Earth creationists People from Leicestershire 19th-century Anglican deacons Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge