at which S. Wilfrith of Ripon was
present and signed for the north part of Britain, rejected as heresy
the doctrine of the two wills, and local councils (as at Hatfield six
months later) agreed with the rejection.

[Sidenote: Sixth General Council, 681.]

All this led on to the summoning of the Sixth General Council at
Constantinople, which sat from November, 680, to September, 681. The
temporary schism between Rome and Constantinople was healed. Agatho's
letter condemning the doctrine of the two wills was accepted; anathema
was laid upon those, dead or alive, who had accepted the heresy, and
among them Pope Honorius I., a condemnation repeated by many a pope
after him. The Council declared that the Lord possesses two wills,
"for just as the Flesh is, and is said to be, the Flesh of the Word, so
also His human will is, and is said to be, proper [natural] to the
Word." And also, "just as His holy and spotless ensouled flesh was
taken into God yet not annihilated, so His human will though taken into
God was not annihilated." Again, as so often in {89} the days of
Justinian, the words of S. Leo were appropriated for a definition of
the orthodox belief. The Council was attended by 289 bishops, the
emperor occupying the position which had been common since Nicaea,
while on his right were the bishops of the East, on his left those of
the West. Rightly was the doctrine of one will condemned as contrary
to the Chalcedonian assertion of the Lord's perfect Humanity; and the
condemnation was readily accepted by the Church. Only in Syria, among
the Maronites (followers of John Maro), did Monothelitism linger on for
centuries, till they became absorbed in the Latin Church.

[Sidenote: The Monothelite controversy.]

The chief opponent of Monothelitism was Maximus, whose _Disputation
with Pyrrhus_ remains the most important survival of the controversy.
It is a subtle and rational exposition of the orthodox doctrine. The
original phrase, _theandric energy_, from which the Ecthesis of
Heraclius started, seems to have been drawn from the unknown Platonist
who came to be called Dionysius the Areopagite, and whose writings had
a continued influence in the Middle Age. But to all reasonable
thinkers the main question was decided. The truth of Christ's human
nature was an essential verity of the faith, and to deny His human will
would make His nature incomplete, and His goodness in any true sense
impossible. The difficulty wou