senters, 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 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 multitude were not
enlisted on the side of the Monothelites. In the next generation,
when the son of Constantine was deposed and slain by the disciple of
Macarius, they tasted the feast of revenge and dominion: the image or
monument of the sixth council was defaced, and the original acts were
committed to the flames. But in the second year, their patron was cast
headlong from the throne, the bishops of the East were released from
their occasional conformity, the Roman faith was more firmly replanted
by the orthodox successors of Bardanes, and the fine problems of the
incarnation were forgotten in the more popular and visible quarrel of
the worship of images.

Before the end of the seventh century, the creed of the incarnation,
which had been defined at Rome and Constantinople, was uniformly
preached in the remote islands of Britain and Ireland; the same ideas
were entertained, or rather the same words were repeated, by all the
Christians whose liturgy was performed in the Greek or the Latin tongue.
Their numbers, and visible splendor, bestowed an imperfect claim to the
appellation of Catholics: but in the East, they were marked with the
less honorable name of _Melchites_, or Royalists; of men, whose faith,
instead of resting on the basis of Scrip