The magistrates, however, far from reforming the Roman worship, remained motionless and silent. The friends of the Gospel took the initiative. Claude Bernard, the brother of Jacques, one of the captains of the city, a man full of zeal for the truth, went before the council on June 28th, accompanied by the ministers and several notables, and represented that the mass, images, and other inventions and idolatries,[554] being contrary to Holy Scripture, as the disputation had showed, it was time they were suppressed. The law of conscience ought to become the law of the State also. Bernard said: 'Ought a father to permit the children whose guardianship God has intrusted to him, to become attached to errors opposed to the truth of God? Magistrates, act like fathers. It will be to the glory of God and the salvation of the people.'[555] The syndics and councils could not come to a decision. The step they were asked to take was that of a giant. They feared to excite the catholics to take up arms, and the duke of Savoy to surround Geneva with his artillery. To cross definitively the line which separated the old times from the new was too much for them. St. Paul and the Apostles had done it in their day, and the reformers were doing it now; but the syndics of Geneva were neither Pauls nor Farels. They feared civil war and escalades; they preferred waiting for the Reform to be accomplished without them, for everything to be changed without any one's observing it. The council, therefore, procrastinated and did nothing.[556] 'The minutes of the discussion take a long time arranging,' answered the premier syndic to Claude Bernard; 'as soon as they are drawn out, we will see what is to be done.' The great evolution of the Reformation was metamorphosed by these worthy ediles into a question of drawing up minutes. To show their love for the _status quo_, they condemned to three days' imprisonment, on bread and water and the strappado, a huguenot who had destroyed the images placed in front of the chapel of Notre Dame. Farel's friends determined to wait; but no measure of reform appeared, although they waited ten times the space required to examine the minutes. The huguenots thought that the council was taking refuge in 'tortuous hiding-places,' when it ought to act boldly in the light of day. The evangelicals thought that 'as God gives us everything openly, the secrets of our hearts ought also to be open and displayed.'