Canon Arthur James Mason, Dean of Canterbury: "Thomas Cranmer," 187ff.

A review is given of the third through sixth recantations of Dr. Cranmer, each more explicit and abject than the preceding and each signed by his own hand. Dr. Cole visits him the night before the burning on 20 Mar 1556. Dr. Cole is the preacher since Mary wanted “good sermons” preached at the burning of heretics. Cranmer slept until 5 AM, 21 Mar 1556. It was a foul and raining day in Oxford, so Dr. Cole wanted the sermon to be preached in St. Mary’s rather than outside in the rain. Dean Mason describes the emotive tone of the event. Dr. Cranmer is given space to speak. He thanks the auditors for their prayers, leads them in the LORD’s prayer but without the Ave Maria, and begins his recitation of the Apostles’ Creed. Then, he drops the bomb. A Navy flare at night. The emphasis of a bomb exploded on target. God had ordained and permitted this awful fall, only to magnify and strengthen Tom and the English Reformation.

WCF 5.5 is the theological hermeneutic for Tom's disastrous fall and divinely-aided recovery, to wit: “The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave, for a season, his own children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled; and, to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends.”

Dr. Cranmer’s closing remarks, after which he was hustled off to the stake amidst the uproar, to wit: “…the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth ; which now here I renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and writ for fear of death and to save my life, if it might be ; and that is, all such bills which I have written or signed with mine own hand since my degradation ; 1 wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished. For if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ's enemy and antichrist, with all his false doctrine.” 

Well now, Tom, this will not end well for you in this world but will in the next.