gie; whereupon, Bilney, with other good men, marvelling at the incredible insolence of the clergie, which they could no longer suffer or abide, began to shake and reprove this excessive pompe, and also to pluck at the authority of the Bishop of Rome."

It therefore became necessary that the Cardinal should rouse himself and look about him. A chapter being held at Westminster for the occasion, Thomas Bilney, with his friends, Thomas Arthur and Hugh Latimer, were brought before them, Gilpin says, "That, as Bilney was considered as the Heresiarch, the rigour of the court was chiefly levelled against him. The principal persons at this time concerned in ecclesiastical affairs, besides Cardinal Wolsey, were Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Tunstall, Bishop of London." The latter was, of all the prelates of these times, the most deservedly esteemed, "as he was not influenced by the spirit of popery, and had just notions of the mild genius of christianity;" but, every deposition against Bilney was enlarged upon with such unrelenting bitterness, that Tunstall, though the president of the court, despaired of being able to soften, by his influence, the enraged proceedings of his colleagues. And, when the process came to an end," Bilney, declaring himself what they called an obstinate heretic, was found guilty." Tunstall now proved the kindness of his heart. He could not come forward in Bilney's favour by a judicial interference, but he laboured to save him by all means in his power. "He first set his friends upon him to persuade him to recant; and when that would not do, he joined his entreaties to theirs; had patience with him day after day, and begged

he would not oblige him, contrary to his inclinations, to treat him with severity."

The man whom fear was not able to move, was not proof against the language of affectionate persuasion. "Bilney could not withstand the winning rhetoric of Tunstall, though he withstood the menaces of Warham." He therefore recanted, bore a faggot on his shoulders in the Cathedral church of Paul, bare-headed, according to the custom of the times, and was dismissed with Latimer and the others, who had met with milder treatment and easier terms."

The liberated heretics, as they were called, returned directly to Cambridge, where they were received with open arms by their friends; but in the midst of this joy, Bilney kept aloof, bearing on his countenance the marks of internal suffering and incessant gloom. "He received the congratulations of his officious friends with confusion and blushes;" he had sinned against his God, therefore he could neither be gratified nor cheered by the affection of any earthly being. In short, his mind at length preying on itself, nearly disturbed his reason, and his friends dared not allow him to be left alone, either by night or day. They tried to comfort him; but they tried in vain; and when they endeavoured to sooth him by certain texts in Scripture, it was as though a man would run him through with a sword." In the agonies of his despair he uttered pathetic and eager accusations of his friends, of Tunstall, and, above all, of himself. At length, his violence having had its course, it subsided, by degrees, into a state of profound melancholy. In this state he continued from the year 1629 to 1631, "reading much, avoiding company,

and, in all respects, preserving the severity of an ascetic."

It is interesting to observe in how many different ways our soul's adversary deals with us, in order to allure us to perdition; and he is never so successful as when he can make the proffered sin assume the appearance of what is amiable. This seems to have been the case with the self-judged Bilney. To the fear of death, and the menaces of Warham, we are told that he opposed a resolution and an integrity which could not be overcome ; but the gentle entreaties of affection, and the tender persuasive eloquence of Tunstall, had power to conquer his love of truth, and make the pleadings of conscience vain ; while he probably looked upon his yielding as a proof of affectionate gratitude; and that, not to consider the feelings of those who loved him, would have been offensive, and ungrateful hardness of heart.

But, whatever were his motives to sin, that sin was indeed visited with remorse as unquestionable as it was efficacious; and it is pleasant to turn from the contemplation of Bilney's frailty, to that of its exemplary and courted expiation.

The consequences of this salutary period of sorrow and seclusion was, that after having, for some time, thrown out hints that he was meditating an extraordinary design; after saying that he was almost prepared, that he would shortly go up to Jerusalem, and that God must be glorified in him ; and keeping his friends in painful suspense by this mysterious language, he told them at last that he was fully determined to expiate his late shameful abjuration, that wicked lie against his conscience, by death.

There can be no doubt but that his friends again interposed to shake his resolutions; but that Being who had lent a gracious ear to the cry of his penitence and his agony, "girded up his loins for the fight," and enabled him to sacrifice every human affection at the foot of the cross, and strengthened him to take up that cross, and bear it, unfainting, to the end. He therefore broke from all his Cambridge ties, and set out for Norfolk, the place of his nativity, and which, for that reason, he chose to make the place of his death.

When he arrived there, he preached openly in fields, confessing his fault, and preaching publicly that doctrine which he had before abjured, to be the VERY TRUTH, and willed all men to beware by him, and never to trust to their fleshy friends in causes of religion; and so setting forward in his journey towards the celestial Jerusalem, he departed from thence to the Anchresse in Norwich, (whom he had converted to Christ,) and there gave her a New Testament of Tindal's translation, and "the obedience of a christian man ;" whereupon he was apprehended, and carried to prison.

Nixe, (the blind Bishop Nixe, as Fox calls him,) the then Bishop of Norwich, was a man of a fierce inquisitorial spirit, and he lost no time in sending up for a writ to burn him.

In the meanwhile, great pains were taken by divers religious persons to re-convert him to what his assailants believed to be the truth; but he having "planted himselfe upon the firm rocke of God's word, was at a point, and so continued to

the end."

While Bilney lay in the county gaol, waiting the arrival of the writ for his execution, he entirely re

covered from that melancholy which had so long oppressed him; and "like an honest man who had long lived under a difficult debt, he began to resume his spirits when he thought himself in a situation to discharge it."-Gilpin's Lives of the Reformers, p. 358.

"Some of his friends found him taking a hearty supper the night before his execution, and expressing their surprise, he told them he was but doing what they had daily examples of in common life; he was only keeping his cottage in repair while he continued to inhabit it." The same composure ran through his whole behaviour, and his conversation was more agreeable that evening than they had ever remembered it to be.

Some of his friends put him in mind "that though the fire which he should suffer the next day should be of great heat unto his body, yet the comfort of God's Spirit should coole it to his everlasting refreshing." At this word the said Thomas Bilney putting his hand towards the flame of the candle burning before them, (as he also did divers times besides,) and feeling the heat thereof, "Oh!” said he, "I feel by experience, and have knowne it long by philosophie, 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 spoken of in the same, that in the flame they felt no heate, and in the fire they felt no consumption: and I constantly believe that, howsoever the stubble of this my bodie shall be wasted by it, yet my soule and spirit shall be purged thereby; a paine for the time, whereon, notwithstanding, followeth joy unspeakable." He then dwelt much upon a passage in Isaiah. "Fear not, for I have redeemed thee,