Lewis Bayly

Lewis Bayly (died 26 October 1631) was a bishop of the Church of England.

He was born possibly in Carmarthen, or possibly in Biggar, Scotland. educated at Oxford, became vicar of Evesham, Worcestershire, and probably in 1604 became rector of St. Matthew's Church, Friday street, London. He was then chaplain to Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales (died 1612), later chaplain to King James I, who, in 1616, appointed him Bishop of Bangor. He was an ardent Puritan. He died in Bangor.

Bayly's fame rests on his book The Practice of Piety, directing a Christian how to walk that he may please God (date of first edition unknown; 3d ed., London, 1613; reprinted as ). It reached its 74th edition in 1821 and has been translated into French, German, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Romansh, Welsh, and into the language of the Massachusetts Indians. In The Netherlands it became the best sold reformed book of the 17th century. The Hungarian translation was by the puritan pastor and theologian Pál Medgyesi, first published in Debrecen in 1636. It was one of the two books which John Bunyan's wife brought with her—the other one being Arthur Dent's Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven ()—and it was by reading it that Bunyan was first spiritually awakened.

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