the rest of Honorius's letter, where the Pope says: "Non sunt hæc diversæ voluntates," he continues: "Non ergo naturalem, atque humanam, uti dicebam, voluntatem interimit (Honorius), sed vitiosam et innaturalem. And again, insisting on the Pope's words, "Non sunt hæc diversæ voluntates" he remarks: "Hoc est contrariæ et adversantes; ex quo palam conficitur, esse in Christo duas naturales voluntates. Nam si contrariam ut homo non habuit, naturali præditus fuit. Quod enim contrarium non est, naturale prorsus est." + S. Maximus draws these consequences, after having fully examined Honorius's letter; and he appeals at the end to the evidence of Abbot Anastasius and Abbot John in order to establish this view. Now Mr. Renouf in his second pamphlet, by suppressing the most important passage from S. Maximus's letter, referring to Abbot John's witness in favour of Pope Honorius's orthodoxy, gives his readers to believe that S. Maximus in his conference with Pyrrhus appealed to the testimony of Abbot John, as being the best able to judge of the meaning of Pope Honorius's letter; but that in his letter to Marinus he adopted a totally different explanation.‡ Now in our pamphlet on Pope Honorius we assert that S. Maximus in his letter to Marinus appealed expressly to the authority of Abbot John, not in order to prove his thesis, but in order to confirm it. We have seen what was the thesis of S. Maximus, let us now see whether the view, attributed by him to Abbot John in this very letter, disagrees with his own. The learned Martyr plainly asserts that the view of Abbot John, the secretary of Honorius, was: "nullo modo (Honorium) abolendam seu excludendam censuisse naturalem Salvatoris, qua homo est, voluntatem; sed eam duntaxat, quæ nostra est atque vitii labem habet, penitus eliminasse et sustulisse."§ Now this view of Abbot John referred to by S. Maximus is a plain confirmation of the one he expressed in the foregoing passages. At the same time it is identical with the view which the Abbot expressed in the letter he wrote to the Emperor Constantine in the name of Pope John, and to which S. Maximus alludes in his conference with Pyrrhus. || "That if the holy * Ibid., 1. c. + Ibid. p. 243. According to these passages, I said in my pamphlet on Pope Honorius that S. Marinus had spoken of one will in Christ's humanity; and it was with reference to the same that I said that Mr. Renouf, with somewhat lax notions of literary honesty, has withheld the evidence from the eyes of his readers. "The Case of Pope Honorius," p. 33. § "Epist. ad Marinum," l. c. p. 246. Op. t. ii. p. 330, ed. cit. doctor in his letter to Marinus preferred to explain the words: "Unam voluntatem' of Honorius's letter in the sense that no carnal will or lustful thought preceded the conception or birth of Christ," that view of his own did not affect in the least the object of his apology, which was to prove that Pope Honorius in his letter to Sergius did not deny a human will in Christ, but only the carnal sensual will; that therefore he was not a Monothelite. He showed this from the letter itself; and confirmed it by the authority of Abbot John. Consequently S. Maximus did not justify Honorius, as Mr. Renouf asserts, because he believed himself to be in possession of extrinsic evidence in favour of his orthodoxy. But he appealed to the extrinsic evidence in order to confirm the construction he had put upon the letter of Honorius, which he had proved as orthodox independently of any extrinsic testimony. As to Pope John IV., one of the witnesses appealed to in favour of Honorius, Mr. Renouf speaks of him with great contempt. He represents his letter to the Emperor Constantine as most extraordinary and ludicrous, if considered as a description of Sergius's letter to Honorius, and moreover objectionable in every part. Now we have seen in our pamphlet that Pope John's Apologia pro Honorio Papa may be divided into two parts: the first points out the meaning of the passage of Honorius's letter, which had been misrepresented by Pyrrhus; the latter demonstrates the opposition existing between the doctrine of Honorius and the error of the Monothelites, which is shown to be a disguised Eutychianism.§ Now Mr. Renouf passes over its second part, and represents the first as it were the whole Apologia, and a full analysis of Sergius's letter. Pope John wrote that apology when Pyrrhus published an extract from the Pope's letter to Sergius, for the purpose of showing that the Pontiff had taught one will in Christ. He was therefore only bound to prove that Honorins had denied in Christ nothing but the sensual will; and consequently that this doctrine had nothing to do with the dogma of the Monothelites. Pope John's object was neither to analyze Sergius's letter, nor to refute it, nor to discover its heretical bearings. Nor can it be said on that account that he gave a false statement of the controversy or that there is any discrepancy between his Apologia and Sergius's letter. "The Case of Pope Honorius," p. 34. † καὶ ἄντω μὲν ἔγωγε τὸν νοῦν ἔχειν ὑπολαμβάνω, πάσης ὄντα καθαρὸν rodiac. "Epist. ad Marinum," 1. c. p. 244. "The Case of Pope Honorius," &c., pp. 30, 31. "Pope Honorius before the Tribunal," &c., pp. 63, 64. But I have said all this in my pamphlet.* Nevertheless Mr. Renouf harps on the same string, without taking into the least account what I had replied to his charges against that Pope. With regard to Abbot John, two accusations are made by Mr. Renouf against him: (1) that he, as secretary of Pope John IV., gave an utterly false account of the letter of Sergius to Honorius, when writing in the Pope's name to the Emperor Constantine;† (2) that Abbot John was wanting in veracity when he asserted that Honorius's letter did not speak of one will, but that the Greeks had wrongly interpreted the passage. Now as to the first charge, we have already said that neither Pope John IV. nor his secretary, Abbot John, had the slightest intention to give a full account of the whole drift of Sergius's letter, but only to show what caused Pope Honorius to prove that in Christ there were not two contrary wills. Doubtless Sergius had explicitly asserted that the profession of two operations in Christ had given scandal to many, who thought it would imply the existence in Christ of two conflicting wills. Honorius wrote his letter to the effect of proving the inconsistency of that supposed consequence, and consequently in order to vindicate the doctrine of two operations in Christ from the charge of any error whatever. The secretary of Pope John IV. intended only to explain this point of view in order to justify his master. Nor was he wrong when he gave Abbot Anastasius the foregoing account of the interpretation of Pope Honorius's letter by the Greeks. For, according to the statement made by Anastasius and related by S. Maximus, Abbot John said, "Nullo modo in ca (epistola) per numerum mentionem fecisse (Honorium) unius omnimodæ voluntatis; licet hoc nunc ab eis confictum sit, qui epistolam Græce reddiderunt. § Now, I think that if the words. of the Abbot be carefully considered and confronted with S. Maximus's letter, in which they are found, they could bear a meaning which is neither false nor a contradiction to what he wrote in Pope John's name to the Emperor Constantine. In fact, the words in question, if taken in their proper * Ibid. p. 64, seq. If Mamachi had taken the true view of Pope John's Apologia pro Honorio Papa," he would not have grounded any argument on the supposed discrepancy between the letters of Sergius and Pope Honorius. But he, with other writers of his age, having taken the line of discarding all the documents brought against Honorius as falsified, exaggerated everything which would contribute to justify their view. "The Case of Pope Honorius," pp. 32, 33. Ibid. 1. c. § ὡς οὐδαμῶς ἐν αὐτῷ ἐπίμνησιν δὲ ἀριθμοῦ πεποίηται ἑνὸς τὸ παράπον θελήματος. 'Epist. ad Marinum," Op. t. ii. p. 244. VOL. XIX.-NO. XXXVII. [New Series.] H sense, do not deny that in Honorius's letter the word unam was wanting, but that it meant only one will in Christ, absolately and exclusively one will (ἑνὸς τὸ παράπαν θελήματος). The Greeks, with Pyrrhus, attributed this meaning to it in order to support their error by the authority of the Roman Pontiff. Abbot John in his words regarded the quotation from Honorius's letter as referred to by Pyrrhus, who sent to all the Churches circulars approving of the Ecthesis and quoting in its support the passage in question. No wonder that Pyrrhus in his translation of Honorius's words may have used expressions bearing the meaning of ἑνὸς τὸ παράπαν θελήματος. At all events, Abbot John did not refer to Honorius's letter, as it appeared later in the Acts of the Sixth Council, but as it was garbled by Pyrrhus. That the Abbot did not deny the existence of the word unam in Honorius's letter, is manifest from the whole letter of S. Maximus to Marinus. S. Maximus not only admits the fact of Pope Honorius having written the words "unam D.N.I.C. voluntatem fatemur," but he refers to them at least three times in the course of his letter; he explains their meaning, and proves that they by no means exclude the human will in Christ. He afterwards appeals to the authority of Abbot John as to a witness; and he refers, as we said above, to the explanation given by him of Honorius's statement, to wit: "At neque ullo modo abolendam, seu excludendam censuisse (Honorium) naturalem Salvatoris, qua homo est, voluntatem, sed eam dumtaxat, quæ nostra est, atque vitii labem habet, penitus eliminasse et sustulisse." Now, if Abbot John had denied the existence of the word unam in the passage quoted from Honorius, how could S. Maximus appeal to the Abbot's authority in order to confirm his explanation? If Abbot John had meant that the words unam voluntatem did not exist in the letter, how is it that he, the Abbot, justified them by the explanation to which we have above referred? Such being the meaning of the Abbot's statement, any one may easily understand that it contradicts by no means what he himself wrote in Pope John's name to the Emperor, and which was quoted by S. Maximus in his Dispute with Pyrrhus. Finally, with regard to the same Abbot John, we dare to say that it is very unfair in Mr. Renouf to press again the same charge of unveracity and dishonesty against the holy secretary of two Popes. To the authority of S. Maximus, who calls him "a most holy man,' that gentleman replies that "this expression was indiscriminately used of all persons in high ecclesiastical office, who had not compromised themselves in any way."* But was it also "The Case of Pope Honorius," p. 35, note. usual to say of high ecclesiastical dignitaries, that "he was a man who had illustrated all the West with his virtues and religious doctrines"?* Now S. Maximus spoke of Abbot John exactly in this manner; and he could by no means speak thus of a public forger. Thus the words of the holy martyr are a certain guarantee of Abbot John's veracity. It remains to examine what Mr. Renouf says concerning the Council of Lateran, for the purpose of showing that the cause of Pope Honorius was held to be no longer defensible at the time of that Synod. His argument, which he had already urged in his first pamphlet, runs as follows:-"The fact that Pope Martin I. and the Lateran Council heard Honorius quoted in a dogmatic letter (of Patriarch Paul, a Monothelite) as an authority for Monothelism, without any contradiction being offered, is a sure sign that his cause was no longer held to be defensible." In our last pamphlet we examined this argument, which has also been used by Dr. Döllinger and perhaps by others before him. There we opposed no less than four reasons to the assertion of Mr. Renouf. But we tried beforehand to give a retort to his argument for the reason that, besides the name of Honorius, that of some other Fathers of the Church had been mentioned by Patriarch Paul. Mr. Renouf, as usual, passes over my four arguments, and he attacks only the retort, representing it to be the only reason employed in my pamphlet against his charge. Now we remarked in our pamphlet, first that Pope Martin, being aware of Paul's calumny against Honorius, at the opening of the council, made a solemn declaration in favour of all his predecessors in order to reject beforehand the infamous charge of the Monothelite champion. We added, secondly, that the same Pope Martin, after the opening of the Council, explicitly declared that it was his intention and that of the whole Synod to discover and bring to light all the authors of the Monothelite heresy. And yet he did not say a word which could possibly refer to Pope Honorius. Moreover, thirdly, we called attention to the many libelli of Abbots, Bishops, and Synods, which were read in the course of the Council, all concerning the Monothelite controversy. In each of them the four Patriarchs, together with other partisans and promoters of the new heresy, were unanimously denounced, but no direct or indirect allusion was made to Pope Honorius. The doctrine of that Pope was not considered as deserving of such denun "Disp. cum Pyrrho," Op. t. ii. p. 329, ed. Migne. |