At the first, Kennedy was faint, and gladly would have recanted. But, when a place of repentance was denied unto him, the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of all comfort, began to work in him. The inward comfort began to burst forth, in visage as well as in tongue and word; for his countenance began to be cheerful. With a joyful voice he said, upon his knees, "O Eternal God! how wondrous is that love and mercy that Thou bearest unto mankind, and unto me the most caitiff and miserable wretch above all others; for, even now, when I would have denied Thee, and Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, my only Saviour, and so have casten myself into everlasting damnation; Thou, by Thine own hand, hast pulled me from the very bottom of hell, and makest me to feel that heavenly comfort which takes from me the ungodly fear wherewith before I was oppressed. Now I defy death; do what ye please, I praise my God I am ready." The godly and learned Jerome, railed upon by those godless tyrants, answered, "This is your hour and that of the power of darkness: now sit ye as judges; and we stand wrongfully accused, and more wrongfully to be condemned; but the day shall come, when our innocency shall appear, and ye shall see your own blindness, to your everlasting confusion. Go forward, and fulfil the measure of your iniquity." When these servants of God thus behaved themselves, there arose a variance betwixt the Archbishop and the beasts that came from the Cardinal. The Archbishop said, "I think it better to spare these men, rather than to put them to death." Thereat the idiot Doctors, offended, said, "What will ye do, my Lord? Will ye condemn all that my Lord Cardinal and the other bishops and we have done? If so ye do, ye show yourself enemy to the Kirk and us, and so we will repute you, be ye assured." At these words the faithless man, effrayed,[28] adjudged the innocents to die, according to the desire of the wicked. [28] Frightened; afraid. [Sidenote: The Friars are burned.] The meek and gentle Jerome Russell comforted the other with many comfortable sentences, oft saying unto him, "Brother, fear not: more potent is He that is in us, than is he that is in the world. The pain that we shall suffer is short, and shall be light; but our joy and consolation shall never end. Therefore, let us contend to enter in unto our Master and Saviour, by the strait way which He has trod before us. Death cannot destroy us; for it is destroyed already by Him for whose sake we suffer." With these and the like comfortable sentences, they passed to the place of execution, and constantly triumphed over death and Satan, even in the midst of the flaming fire. [Sidenote: The Bigotry of James V.]