WINNER OF MEN FOR GOD
ALTHOUGH not listed among the great in Reformation circles, Thomas Bilney was, nonetheless, an important link in the progress of that movement in England. “Little Bilney,” as he was affectionately named because of his diminutive stature, is sometimes called “The father of the English Reformation,” for two reasons: He was the first to be converted by the reading of Erasmus’s New Testament, and he converted more great men among the English Reformers than did anyone else.
He was born at or near Norwich in 1495 and lived in Cambridge from childhood. He attended Trinity College and attained the degree of doctor of laws. He was ordained a priest in 1519.
Of a serious turn of mind and abstemious, he attempted early in life to fulfill the commandments of God; and he strove by fasting, long vigils, masses, and the purchase of indulgences to win peace of mind. Like Luther, Bilney discovered that good works alone were not enough to secure him the relief he sought.
Many of Bilney’s acquaintances were talking about a new book, the Greek New Testament. But the priests had forbidden Bilney to read it, and, being a good Catholic who desired to fulfill all obligations, and especially
ecclesiastical commands, he desisted. Finally, unable to resist his curiosity any longer, he decided to read it in secret, for he was greatly attracted to its reported beauty of style.
With considerable fear he purchased a copy from a house that was secretly selling it, against the law. Locking himself in his room, he allowed the book to fall open, and he read,
“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” 1 Timothy 1:15.
Bilney grasped the idea readily that if Paul thought himself the chief of sinners and yet was saved, then he, Bilney, even a greater sinner in his own estimation, could be saved, too. What a revelation! What a relief!
Instead of despair, a great inward peace now came into his soul.
Merle d’Aubigne, who writes the account, quotes Bilney’s words:
“I see it all; my vigils, my fasts, my pilgrimages, my purchase of masses and indulgences, were destroying instead of saving me. All these efforts were, as St. Augustine says, a hasty running out of the right way.”
From then on Bilney became a devotee of the Bible; he never grew weary of reading it. More than that, he had a great urge to share his new-found faith with others. He desired nothing more than to be able to show his associates God’s great love.
Since he was of a shy and bashful nature, he did not at first with boldness preach to the world. It is written that his vocation was prayer. He made it his business to call upon God day and night, pleading for souls; and God answered him. Any evangelist would be proud to count among his converts those that Bilney made, names that stand high in the Reformation’s hall of fame, persons without whom the English
Reformation would perhaps not have been accomplished. Of Cambridge’s eminent professors, Arthur, Thistle, and Stafford were the first to respond to him. Latimer, Barnes, Lambert, Warner, Fooke, and Soude were also among those he converted. All were men who played foremost roles in the English Reformation.
After Bilney converted Latimer, the students flocked to hear Bilney preach. “Bilney, whom we continually meet with when any secret work, a work of irresistible charity, is in hand,” knew how to approach these men.
“The pious man often succeeds better, even with the great ones of this world, than the ambitious and the intriguing.”
He had the secret power gained by long hours on his knees in his closet.
He prayed,
“O Thou who art the truth, give me strength that I may teach it;
and convert the ungodly by means of one who has been ungodly himself.”
Bilney always attempted to fit his method to the individual he wished to convert. In the case of Latimer, a Catholic who disdained the evangelicals at the university, he won by confessing to him the story of his own conversion. In the case of Barnes, “the Goliath of the university,” he first prayed long and earnestly. Then he held many conversations and prayers with Barnes, and urged him to declare his faith openly without fear of reproach. At other times he assembled his friends together and pointed his finger at the text that had converted him. By this means he converted large numbers.
For a time the little Reformer joined his efforts with those of John Frith and William Tyndale. Together they preached repentance and conversion, denying that anyone could get his sins forgiven by any priest or by doing any good work.
Bilney had little regard for the popes. He declared, “These five hundred years there hath been no good pope; and in all the times past we can find but fifty: for they have neither preached nor lived well, nor conformably to their dignity; wherefore, unto this day, they have borne the keys of simony.” (As an example of the men of whom he spoke, who held low moral standards, we may consider Rodrigo Borgia, who succeeded
Innocent VIII to the papal chair in 1492 as Alexander VI. He lived illicitly with a Roman woman and one of her daughters, having some four children by the latter, all of whom he acknowledged openly and provided with high positions. He bribed all of the cardinals, and gave at least one of them large amounts of silver, to obtain the papal chair. His manner of life and his procedure in obtaining the papal crown were characteristic of other popes of that period.) At another time Bilney said, “The cowl of St. Francis wrapped round a dead body hath no power to take away sins.”
Bilney was the leader of the Protestant group at Cambridge, and he preached simply and directly that Jesus Christ delivered from sin. As
matter-of-fact as this statement may sound to present-day Christendom, it was nearly as startling as an atomic bomb to the people living in sixteenth- century Europe. They knew but one route to heaven; namely, good works, fasting, indulgences, purgatory, and the mass.
Mainly as the result of Bilney’s work at Cambridge “seven colleges at least were in full ferment: Pembroke, St John’s, Queens’, King’s, Caius, Benet’s and Peterhouse. The gospel was preached at the Augustine’s, at St. Mary’s, (the university church,) and in other places.”
Thus the Reformation received impetus in England. Eventually overcoming his shyness, Bilney began preaching with the vigor of an evangel. In 1525 he secured a license to preach in the diocese of Ely. He left the university and in the company of Arthur went many places. In Suffolk, at the town of Hadleigh, many were converted. Here he performed such faithful work in teaching the people that they became great Bible students, so much so
“that the whole town seemed rather a university of the learned than a town of clothmaking or laboring people.” — John Foxe, Book of Martyrs, page 176.
They read their Bibles through many times, memorizing whole portions.
It was not long, however, before opposition to his preaching developed.
Twice monks forcibly drew him out of the pulpit. His denunciation of saint and relic worship, of monkish conduct, and of pilgrimages drew the attention of Cardinal Wolsey. When cited to appear before him in 1527, Bilney denied holding any Lutheran views. Since Wolsey was too engrossed with the tasks of the kingdom, he left the trial in the hands of Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of London.
Bilney was convicted of heresy, but Tunstall, who sympathized with his victim, could not bring himself to pronounce the sentence. Bilney wanted to go to the stake, but the arguments of his friends not to cast his life away, and Tunstall’s continuous putting off the evil day, finally wore down the little man so that he recanted. Knowing that the bishop was a friend of Erasmus, Bilney, during the days of waiting, wrote letters to Tunstall about the Greek New Testament. Tunstall apparently was impressed, but not enough to relent. Wolsey had commanded that Bilney either abjure or die.
The day following his recantation he bore his fagot to Paul’s Cross, the accepted procedure to indicate to the world that he had abjured his heresy.
After this he was placed back in prison.
Now Bilney’s real torment began compared to which his soul struggle before conversion was nothing. After he spent a year in the Tower he returned to Cambridge, but he was so tortured by remorse that he had denied his Christ, that he could not bear to have anyone, not even his old friend Latimer, read or mention the Scriptures to him. “His mind
wandered, the blood froze in his veins, he sank under his terrors; he lost all sense, and almost his life, and lay motionless in the arms of his astonished friends.” He could obtain no consolation.
Yet the Holy Spirit did not entirely forsake him. Finally when peace was once more restored in his heart, he resolved to rectify the great wrong he had done. He determined never again to renounce the truth of God’s word.
One night at ten o’clock, in 1531, he bade his friends at Cambridge good- by, saying that he was going to Jerusalem. (He referred to Christ’s words, when He went to Jerusalem to suffer the crucifixion.) His destination was Norfolk, where he had first preached. Since his license had been revoked, he went from house to house, and he also spoke in the fields. There he openly confessed that he had denied the truth. From Norfolk he went to Norwich, where he was apprehended and placed in prison. Here the sheriff, a special friend of his, who wanted to do something for him, treated him well.
The night before the execution, friends who came to comfort reminded him, “Though the fire would be hot, God’s spirit would cool it.” To show them his lack of fear he put his finger in the candle flame, leaving it there until it was burned off to the first joint. He told them, “I feel by
experience, and have known it long by philosophy, that fire by God’s ordinance is naturally hot; but yet I am persuaded by God’s Holy Word, and by the experience of some mentioned in that word, that in the flame they felt no heat, and in the fire they felt no consumption; and I can constantly believe, however the stubble of this my body shall be wasted by it, yet my soul and spirit shall be purged thereby, a pain for the time, whereon, notwithstanding, followeth joy unspeakable.” He referred them to Isaiah 43:2:
“When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”
Bilney was executed at Lollard’s Pit, in a low valley surrounded by hills.
This spot was chosen, says Foxe, so that people might have the comfort of sitting quietly to see the executions. A “vast concourse of spectators”
came to see “little Bilney” burn. People living in sixteenth-century England were apparently as enthusiastic for these burnings as were those of pagan Rome to see the early Christians thrown into the arena to be devoured by wild beasts.
Of Bilney’s last moments Foxe writes, “Then the officers put reeds and fagots about his body, and set fire to them, which made a very great flame, and deformed his face, he holding up his hands, and knocking upon his breast, crying sometimes, ‘Jesus,’ sometimes, ‘I believe.’ The flame was blown away from him by the violence of the wind, which was that day, and two or three days before, very great; and so for a little pause he stood without flame; but soon the wood again took the flame, and then he gave up the ghost, and his body, being withered, bowed downward against the chain. Then one of the officers with his halbert smote out the staple in the stake behind him, and suffered his body to fall into the bottom of the fire, laying wood on it; and so he was consumed.”