Thursday, June 2, 2011

There But for the Grace of God . . .

"There but for the grace of God go I." 

Although this can come across as a pious "holier than thou" type of statement, the irony is that the original person who spoke this comment ended up in the very situation that he was grateful to have avoided.  John Bradford, a protestant reformer, was imprisoned in the Tower of London after the Catholic queen Mary gained the English throne. From his prison cell, as he saw a group of prisoners being taken to execution, he made his famous remark, "There but for the grace of God goes John Bradford." Eventually, he met the same fate, being burned at the stake at Newgate Prison in 1555.



Wikipedia Article on John Bradford

No comments:

Post a Comment