was quite on the right way; but he did not accurately draw the inferences." He ought now to have said: Hence it follows that in Christ, since He is God and man, there exists, together with His Divine Will, only the incorrupt human will. But Honorius kept the human will entirely out of account. He thought that to maintain the co-existence of two distinct wills in Christ would compel the admission of two contradictory wills. He ought to have answered Sergius, You are quite right in saying we must not ascribe two contrary wills to Christ; but, nevertheless, there are in Christ two wills, the divine and the incorrupt human.[1] Instead of which Honorius asserted: "We confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ." Hefele, even after the Vatican decision, felt constrained to describe this statement as "the unhappy sentence which, literally taken, is quite Monothelite."[2]
Hefele also was unable to accept the excuse for this language, proposed by Honorius's immediate successor, to the effect that, being consulted only on the manhood of Christ, there was no occasion to speak of anything else than the human will. This interpretation Hefele characterises as suavior quam verior. For it is simply untrue that he was consulted only on the contents of Christ's human will. Sergius did not ask whether we ought to acknowledge in Christ a will of the flesh and a will of the spirit. He asked nothing at all on this subject, but asserted that in Christ there can be only one will. Hefele's conclusion accordingly was that Honorius encouraged heresy by enjoining silence on the orthodox expression, "two energies," and still more by the unhappy expression, "We confess one will in our Lord Jesus Christ."[3]
But even then, Hefele is constrained by his historic
