Bainham returned to the midst of his brethren: they looked sorrowfully at him, but did not reproach him with his fault. That was quite unnecessary. The worm of remorse was preying on him; he abhorred the fatal kiss by which he had sealed his fall; his conscience was never quiet; he could neither eat nor sleep, and trembled at the thought of death. At one time he would hide his anguish and stifle it within his breast; at another his grief would break forth, and he would try to relieve his pain by groans of sorrow. The thought of appearing before the tribunal of God made him faint. The restoration of conscience to all its rights was the foremost work of the Reformation. Luther, Calvin, and an endless number of more obscure reformers had reached the haven of safety through the midst of such tempests. ‘A tragedy was being acted in all protestant souls,’ says a writer who does not belong to the Reformation—the eternal tragedy of conscience. Bainham felt that the only means of recovering peace was to accuse himself openly before God and man. Taking Tyndale’s New Testament in his hand, which was at once his joy and his strength, he went to St. Austin’s church, sat down quietly in the midst of the congregation, and then at a certain moment stood up and said: ‘I have denied the truth.’... He could not continue for his tears.[213] On recovering, he said: ‘If I were not to return again to the doctrine I have abjured, this word of Scripture would condemn me both body and soul at the day of judgment.’ And he lifted up the New Testament before all the congregation. ‘O my friends,’ he continued, ‘rather die than sin as I have done. The fires of hell have consumed me, and I would not feel them again for all the gold and glory of the world.’[214] Then his enemies seized him again and shut him up in the bishop’s coal-cellar, where, after putting him in irons, they left him for four days. He was afterwards taken to the Tower, where he was scourged every day for a fortnight, and at last condemned as a relapsed heretic. [Sidenote: Bainham Executed.]