man
experience, a will like ours in everything, except that it was free
from moral imperfection. It was a finite will, inasmuch as the
conditioning cognition was finite, perfect of its kind, adequate to its
task, never faltering, yet of finite strength. The two wills have each
their own sphere. They operate in perfect harmony. Only at crises,
such as the Agony, is there any appearance of discord. The opposition
there is only apparent. The human will reaches its limit, and the
superhuman will interposes to perform the superhuman task.

The reality of the two wills, established for the orthodox both _a
priori_ and by an appeal to fact, is denied by the monophysite. He
regards will as the fundamental psychic state and makes it an attribute
of personality. Two wills, he says, would necessitate two persons. He
does not see that personality lies deeper than will, and that will and
cognition are co-ordinate attributes of nature. If Christ had but one
nature, it follows that He had but one will and operation. The
monophysite thinks of two wills as necessarily antagonistic, as are
conflicting motives in man; so he sees no ethical value in dithelite
doctrine. As a matter of fact the moral influence of Christianity
would be much weakened by an abandonment of the doctrine of two wills.
The belief in Christ's human will prevents men from despairing of their
will. Human will cannot be wholly warped, or wholly misdirected, or
utterly powerless, since Christ in His life has shown that it can work
along the same lines as the divine will, that the two can co-operate,
and that where the lower reaches its limit, the higher can step in and
perfect the work.

From the historian's point of view the monothelite controversy is quite
distinct from the monophysite. So we need only take a glance at it
here. It originated in an attempt to win back the monophysites to the
orthodox communion by a doctrinal compromise. The emperor Heraclius
endeavoured to unite catholic and monophysite on the basis of the
formula, "two natures with one will and operation." That formula will
not bear analysis, and the emperor's attempt to use it as an eirenicon
was a complete failure. Imperial pressure induced a few monophysites
to modify their doctrine so far as to admit "one theandric operation;"
but the concession of "one will" from the orthodox side failed to win
from the monophysites the expected concession of "two natures." The
monophysites w