Bilney's Preaching—His arrest—Arthur's Preaching and Imprisonment—Bilney's Examination—Contest between the Judge and the Prisoner—Bilney's weakness and Fall—His Terrors—Two Wants—Arrival of the Fourth Edition of the New Testament—Joy among the Believers.
BILNEY'S PREACHING.
While these passions were agitating Henry's palace, the most moving scenes, produced by Christian faith, were stirring the nation. Bilney, animated by that courage which God sometimes gives to the weakest men, seemed to have lost his natural timidity, and preached for a time with an energy quite apostolic. He taught that all men should first acknowledge their sins and condemn them, and then hunger and thirst after that righteousness which Jesus Christ gives.[700] To this testimony borne to the truth, he added his testimony against error. "These five hundred years," he added, "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."[701]
BILNEY ARRESTED.
As soon as he descended from the pulpit, this pious scholar, with his friend Arthur, visited the neighbouring towns and villages. "The Jews and Saracens would long ago have become believers," he once said at Wilsdown, "had it not been for the idolatry of Christian men in offering candles, wax, and money to stocks and stones." One day when he visited Ipswich, where there was a Franciscan convent, he exclaimed: "The cowl of St. Francis wrapped round a dead body hath no power to take away sins.... Ecce agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi." (John i, 29.) The poor monks, who were little versed in Scripture, had recourse to the Almanac to convict the Bible of error. "St. Paul did rightly affirm," said Friar John Brusierd, "that there is but one mediator of God and man, because as yet there was no saint canonized or put into the calendar."—"Let us ask of the Father in the name of the Son," rejoined Bilney, "and he will give unto us."—"You are always speaking of the Father and never of the saints," replied the friar; "you are like a man who has been looking so long upon the sun that he can see nothing else."[702] As he uttered these words the monk seemed bursting with anger. "If I did not know that the saints would take everlasting vengeance upon you, I would surely with these nails of mine be your death."[703] Twice in fact did two monks pull him out of his pulpit. He was arrested and taken to London.
Arthur, instead of fleeing, began to visit the flocks which his friend had converted. "Good people," said he, "if I should suffer persecution for the preaching of the Gospel, there are seven thousand more that would preach it as I do now. Therefore, good people! good people!" (and he repeated these words several times in a sorrowful voice) "think not that if these tyrants and persecutors put a man to death, the preaching of the Gospel therefore is to be forsaken. Every Christian man, yea every layman, is a priest. Let our adversaries preach by the authority of the cardinal; others by the authority of the university; others by the pope's; we will preach by the authority of God. It is not the man who brings the word that saves the soul, but the word which the man brings. Neither bishops nor popes have the right to forbid any man to preach the Gospel;[704] and if they kill him he is not a heretic but a martyr."[705] The priests were horrified at such doctrines. In their opinion, there was no God out of their church, no salvation out of their sacrifices. Arthur was thrown into the same prison as Bilney.
BILNEY AND ARTHUR BEFORE THE BISHOP.
On the 27th of November 1527 the cardinal and the archbishop Canterbury, with a great number of bishops, divines, and lawyers, met in the chapter-house of Westminster, when Bilney and Arthur were brought before them. But the king's prime minister thought it beneath his dignity to occupy his time with miserable heretics. Wolsey had hardly commenced the examination, when he rose, saying: "The affairs of the realm call me away; all such as are found guilty, you will compel them to abjure, and those who rebel you will deliver over to the secular power." After a few questions proposed by the bishop of London, the two accused men were led back to prison.
BILNEY'S STRUGGLE.
Abjuration or death—that was Wolsey's order. But the conduct of the trial was confided to Tonstall; Bilney conceived some hope.[706] "Is it possible," he said to himself, "that the bishop of London, the friend of Erasmus, will gratify the monks?... I must tell him that it was the Greek Testament of his learned master that led me to the faith." Upon which the humble evangelist having obtained paper and ink, set about writing to the bishop from his gloomy prison those admirable letters which have been transmitted to posterity. Tonstall, who was not a cruel man, was deeply moved, and then a strange struggle took place: a judge wishing to save the prisoner, the prisoner desiring to give up his life. Tonstall, by acquitting Bilney, had no desire to compromise himself. "Submit to the church," said the bishop, "for God speaks only through it." But Bilney, who knew that God speaks in the Scriptures, remained inflexible. "Very well, then," said Tonstall, taking up the prisoner's eloquent letters, "in discharge of my conscience I shall lay these letters before the court." He hoped, perhaps, that they would touch his colleagues, but he was deceived. He determined, therefore, to make a fresh attempt. On the 4th of December, Bilney was brought again before the court. "Abjure your errors," said Tonstall. Bilney refusing by a shake of the head, the bishop continued: "Retire into the next room and consider." Bilney withdrew, and returning shortly after with joy beaming in his eyes, Tonstall thought he had gained the victory. "You will return to the church, then?" said he.... The doctor answered calmly: "Fiat judicium in nomine Domini."[707] "Be quick," continued the bishop, "this is the last moment, and you will be condemned." "Hæc est dies quam fecit Dominus," answered Bilney, "exultemus et lætemur in ea!" (Psalm cxviii, 24). Upon this Tonstall took off his cap, and said: "In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.... Exsurgat Deus et dissipentur inimici ejus!" (Ps. lxviii, 1). Then making the sign of the cross on his forehead and on his breast, he gave judgment: "Thomas Bilney, I pronounce thee convicted of heresy." He was about to name the penalty ... a last hope restrained him; he stopped: "For the rest of the sentence we take deliberation until to-morrow." Thus was the struggle prolonged between two men, one of whom desired to walk to the stake, the other to bar the way as it were with his own body.