Life Action

In a sermon entitled "An Exhortation Against the Fear of Death," an English preacher defined his concern as that of the "frail flesh."

The year was 1547, and the preacher no less than the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who was presiding over the greatest change in the history of English Christianity: a period known as the Reformation. Having seen the seeds of change in Henry VIII's reign with the initial break from Roman Catholicism, Cranmer became the theological and literary architect of the new Protestant England, under the reign of Henry VIII and his successor, Edward VI.

However, due to the premature death of Edward, the spiritual dawn proved to be a false one. Mary, another of Henry VIII's children, reintroduced a forced Catholicism with great zeal, earning her the title "Bloody Mary."

The Protestant cause came under increasing fire as the devout Catholic queen rid the nation of evangelical "heretics"—a description that in Her Majesty's eyes summed up the wayward archbishop.

Refusing to flee for safety, Cranmer was eventually arrested and charged with treason and heresy. After two years of house arrest, prison, and public debate, he was sentenced to be burned for his faith.

Throughout his incarceration, he had remained a staunch defender of the evangelical cause. Yet, having witnessed the public burning of two of his closest friends, Latimer and Ridley, in October of 1555, Cranmer's steady defiance began to weaken. The horrors he had witnessed might soon become his own fate.

In the early months of 1556, under constant psychological pressure and with hope of possible pardon, Cranmer wavered. He wrote a number of denials of his faith, hoping by them to escape a cruel death. He was now overcome with the fears of the "frail flesh" that he had described in his sermon nine years earlier. But his denials were to no avail, and on March 21, 1556, the 67-year-old archbishop faced his accusers one last time in St. Mary's Church, Oxford, before being led to execution.

Expecting him once again to deny his evangelicalism, he was given opportunity to speak publicly from a prepared script. Unexpectedly, he spoke of his troubled conscience, and he took back all his denials, which were "written for fear of death and to save my life." He added, "And for as much as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, it shall be first burned."

Enraged, the authorities dragged him off immediately to the stake. Foxe, the student of martyrs throughout history, described the scene:

And when the wood was kindled and the fire began to burn near him, stretching out his arm, he put his right hand into the flame, which he held so steadfast and unmovable ... that all men might see his hand burned before his body was touched.

Having bravely fought for truth, Thomas Cranmer also battled with personal fears and, like most of us, experienced failure as well as victory. Yet his contribution to the Reformation and his final heroic stand over fear became a key factor in the reintroduction of Bible-based English Christianity, the legacy of which can still be felt all over the world.



Bibliography: Thomas Cranmer, Diarmaid MacCulloch, 1996; Thomas Cranmer, G. W. Bromiley, 1956; Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 1850 edition; Dictionary of English Church History, 3rd edition, 1948 (Ed. S. L. Ollard)

Kevin Adams was born in South Wales and has authored two books and a film on Welsh revival history. He is the senior pastor of East Baptist Church in Lynn, Massachusetts.