Sir Thomas had broken his victim’s limbs, but not his courage; and accordingly when Bainham was summoned before the Bishop of London, he went to the palace rejoicing to have to confess his Master once more. ‘Do you believe in purgatory?’ said Stokesley to him sternly. Bainham answered: ‘_The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin_.’[210] ‘Do you believe that we ought to call upon the saints to pray for us?’ He again answered: ‘_If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous_.’[211] A man who answered only by texts from Scripture was embarrassing. More and Stokesley made the most alluring promises, and no means were spared to bend him.[212] Before long they resorted to more serious representations: ‘The arms of the Church your mother are still open to you,’ they said; ‘but if you continue stubborn, they will close against you forever. It is now or never!’ For a whole month the bishop and the chancellor persevered in their entreaties; Bainham replied: ‘My faith is that of the holy Church.’ Hearing these words, Foxford, the bishop’s secretary, took out a paper. ‘Here is the abjuration,’ he said; ‘read it over.’ Bainham began: ‘I voluntarily, as a true penitent returned from my heresy, utterly abjure’.... At these words he stopped, and glancing over what followed, he continued: ‘No, these articles are not heretical, and I cannot retract them.’ Other springs were now set in motion to shake Bainham. The prayers of his friends, the threats of his enemies, especially the thought of his wife, whom he loved, and who would be left alone in destitution, exposed to the anger of the world: these things troubled his soul. He lost sight of the narrow path he ought to follow, and five days later he read his abjuration with a faint voice. But he had hardly got to the end before he burst into tears, and said, struggling with his emotion: ‘I reserve the doctrines.’ He consented to remain in the Roman Church, still preserving his evangelical faith. But this was not what the bishop and his officers meant. ‘Kiss that book,’ they said to him threateningly. Bainham, like one stunned, kissed the book; that was the sign; the adjuration was looked upon as complete. He was condemned to pay a fine of twenty pounds sterling, and to do penance at St. Paul’s Cross. After that he was set at liberty, on the 17th of February.