Portrait of a Protestant: Bilney

Thomas Bilney (1495 – 1531)
Guest Blogger: Rowena Miers

“Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that save a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found was blind but now I see.” (John Newton 1725-1807)

The words of the song Amazing Grace capture the joyousness experienced by Englishman John Newton upon learning of the forgiveness offered to him through Jesus Christ. This forgiveness is the gracious gift of life undeserved by sinners but given on account of God’s love and goodness.

The account of English Reformer and preacher Thomas Bilney’s conveys the change an understanding of God’s grace makes. Thomas Bilney was born in 1495 near Norwich in England. After being educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he entered the Catholic Church in 1519.

During his study of the New Testament published by Erasmus in 1516 he was struck by the words of 1 Timothy 1:15 reads, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am the chief.” Immediately he records, “I felt a marvellous comfort and quietness …wherein I learned that all my labours, my fasting and watching, all the redemption of masses and pardons, being done without truth in Christ, I learned to be nothing else but even, a hasty and swift running out of the right way”.

The Scriptures now became his chief study, and his influence led other young Cambridge men to think along the same lines including Matthew Parker, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, and Hugh Latimer. As a preacher in the diocese of Ely he denounced saint and relic worship, together with pilgrimages to Walsingham and Canterbury, and refused to accept the mediation of the saints. Bilney’s unorthodox teaching began to raise concerns within the church resulting in Bilney being dragged from the pulpit while preaching in St George’s chapel, Ipswich, arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1528.

After being kept for more than a year in the Tower, he was released in 1529 having been charged to no longer preach along reformed lines. Having had his preaching licence revoked and the churches being no longer open to him, he preached openly in the fields. Upon arriving in Norwich, the bishop, Richard Nix, arrested him on charges of heresy. He was tried, degraded from his orders and handed over to the civil authorities to be burned. The sentence was carried out at Lollards Pit, Norwich on 19 August 1531.

Whilst Bilney retained many orthodox Catholic beliefs he was characterised first and foremost by his trust in God’s grace which many of those he taught also came to trust in.