The bishop ceased, and a dead silence ensued. The devout Standish, fearing lest Henry's well-known love of learning should be an obstacle to his prayer, raised his eyes and his hands toward heaven, and kneeling in the midst of the courtly assembly, exclaimed in a sorrowful tone: "O Christ! O Son of God! save thy spouse! ... for no man cometh to her help."[335] [335] Cæpit obsecrare Christum dignaretur ipse suæ sponsæ opitulari. (Ibid. p. 598.) He began to implore Christ, that he himself would deign to succour his spouse. Having thus spoken, the prelate, whose courage was worthy of a better cause, rose up and waited. Every one strove to guess at the king's thoughts. Sir Thomas More was present, and he could not forsake his friend Erasmus. "What are the heresies this book is likely to engender?" he inquired. After the sublime came the ridiculous. With the forefinger of his right hand, touching successively the fingers of his left,[336] Standish replied: "First, this book destroys _the resurrection_; secondly, it annuls the _sacrament of marriage_; thirdly, it abolishes _the mass_." Then uplifting his thumb and two fingers, he showed them to the assembly with a look of triumph. The bigoted Catherine shuddered as she saw Standish's three fingers,--signs of the three heresies of Erasmus; and Henry himself, an admirer of Aquinas, was embarrassed. It was a critical moment: the Greek Testament was on the point of being banished from England. "The proof, the proof," exclaimed the friends of literature. "I will give it," rejoined the impetuous Standish, and then once more touching his left thumb: "Firstly," he said, ... But he brought forward such foolish reasons, that even the women and the unlearned were ashamed of them. The more he endeavoured to justify his assertions, the more confused he became: he affirmed among other things that the Epistles of St. Paul were written in _Hebrew_. "There is not a schoolboy that does not know that Paul's epistles were written in _Greek_," said a doctor of divinity kneeling before the king. Henry, blushing for the bishop, turned the conversation, and Standish, ashamed at having made a Greek write to the Greeks in Hebrew, would have withdrawn unobserved. "The beetle must not attack the eagle,"[337] was whispered in his ear. Thus did the book of God remain in England the standard of a faithful band, who found in its pages the motto, which the church of Rome had usurped: _The truth is in me alone_. [336] Et rem in digitos porrectos dispartiens. (Ibid.) And distributing the charge on his outstretched fingers. [337] Scarabæus ille qui maximo suo malo aquilam quæsivit. (Erasm. Ep. p. 555.) That beetle who sought to do the worst he could to the eagle. [Sidenote: WOLSEY'S AMBITION.]