ood of
Christ; and no ceremony was omitted that could fill the superstitious
mind with horror and affright. As the representative of the Western
church, Pope Martin and his Lateran synod anathematized the perfidious
and guilty silence of the Greeks: one hundred and five bishops of Italy,
for the most part the subjects of Constans, presumed to reprobate
his wicked type, and the impious ecthesis of his grandfather; and to
confound the authors and their adherents with the twenty-one notorious
heretics, the apostates from the church, and the organs of the devil.
Such an insult under the tamest reign could not pass with impunity.
Pope Martin ended his days on the inhospitable shore of the Tauric
Chersonesus, and his oracle, the abbot Maximus, was inhumanly chastised
by the amputation of his tongue and his right hand. [104] But the same
invincible spirit survived in their successors; and the triumph of the
Latins avenged their recent defeat, and obliterated the disgrace of the
three chapters. The synods of Rome were confirmed by the sixth general
council of Constantinople, in the palace and the presence of a new
Constantine, a descendant of Heraclius. The royal convert converted the
Byzantine pontiff and a majority of the bishops; [105] the dissenters,
with their chief, Macarius of Antioch, were condemned to the spiritual
and temporal pains of heresy; the East condescended to accept the
lessons of the West; and the creed was finally settled, which teaches
the Catholics of every age, that two wills or energies are harmonized
in the person of Christ. The majesty of the pope and the Roman synod
was represented by two priests, one deacon, and three bishops; but these
obscure Latins had neither arms to compel, nor treasures to bribe,
nor language to persuade; and I am ignorant by what arts they could
determine the lofty emperor of the Greeks to abjure the catechism of his
infancy, and to persecute the religion of his fathers. Perhaps the monks
and people of Constantinople [106] were favorable to the Lateran creed,
which is indeed the least reasonable of the two: and the suspicion is
countenanced by the unnatural moderation of the Greek clergy, who appear
in this quarrel to be conscious of their weakness. While the synod
debated, a fanatic proposed a more summary decision, by raising a dead
man to life: the prelates assisted at the trial; but the acknowledged
failure may serve to indicate, that the passions and prejudices of the
mul