for hindering the return of thousands now separated from the Church, with so much earnestness that the good man promised to remain silent. But when three or four years later he was made patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius did not consider the seal of silence any longer binding on him. The situation was entirely altered. In his position of influence he felt it his duty to speak out. So he gathered a synod which pronounced definitely for two wills and two activities. Unfortunately he stated the result of this decision in such a lengthy, bombastic document, that, before he could get copies of it sent round to the leading bishops, Sergius was able to present his views to the Pope Honorius, who never suspected the cloven hoof, and in his simplicity pronounced in favour of the essential Monothelete position. The pope's view was that there were two natures, each working its own way—therefore not with only one activity—but still under the control of one will.
This brings us to the second stage of the controversy. Never did a pope commit himself to heresy with a more innocent intention. But in point of fact not only did Honorius fall into what the Church was afterwards to condemn as a heresy; he even originated this heresy in the final shape which it assumed. Hitherto there has only been a question of one activity. Now, Honorius introduces the idea of the one will. Sophronius only lived two or three years after this; but shortly before his death, since the Mohammedan invasion then prevented him from leaving Palestine, he led Stephen the bishop of Dore to the site of Calvary, and there solemnly adjured him by the sufferings of Christ and the prospect of the final judgment to go to Rome and never rest till he had obtained from the apostolical See a condemnation of the doctrine of the single will in Christ.
In the year 638 Heraclius followed the unfortunate example of his predecessors and attempted to settle the theological dispute by imperial authority. At the suggestion
