will showed many modes of operation and activity.^624 The first letter was decidedly heretical, the
second was certainly not orthodox, and both occasioned and favored the imperial Ekthesis (638)
and Type (648), in their vain attempt to reconcile the Monophysites by suppressing the Dyotheletic
doctrine.^625
The only thing which may and must be said in his excuse is that the question was then new
and not yet properly understood. He was, so to say, an innocent heretic before the church had
pronounced a decision. As soon as it appeared that the orthodox dogma of two natures required the
doctrine of two wills, and that Christ could not be a full man without a human will, the popes
changed the position, and Honorius would probably have done the same had he lived a few years
longer.
Various attempts have been made by papal historians and controversialists to save the
orthodoxy of Honorius in order to save the dogma of papal infallibility. Some pronounce his letters
to be a later Greek forgery.^626 Others admit their genuineness, but distort them into an orthodox
sense by a nonnatural exegesis.^627 Still others maintain, at the expense of his knowledge and logic,
that Honorius was orthodox at heart, but heretical, or at least very unguarded in his expressions.^628
But we have no means to judge of his real sentiment except his own language, which is unmistakably
Monotheletic. And this is the verdict not only of Protestants,^629 but also of Gallican and other liberal
Catholic historians.^630
(^624) Mansi, p. 579; Hefele, p. 166 sq.
(^625) The same view is taken by Neander, the fairest among Protestant, and by Döllinger, the most learned of modern
Catholic, historians. Neander (III. 179, E. ed.; 1II. 360, Germ. ed.) says: "Honorius, in two letters, declared his entire concurrence
(erklärte, sich ganz übereinstimmend) with the views of Sergius, and wrote also in the same terms to Cyrus and Sophronius.
He too was afraid of logical determinations on such matters. It seemed to him altogether necessary to suppose but one will in
Christ, as it was impossible to conceive, in him, any strife between the human and divine will such as by, reason, of sin exists
in men." ["It seemed to him, as well as to Sergius, that a duplicity of will in one and the same subject could not subsist without
opposition." From the foot-note.] "He approved, indeed, of the accommodation (οἰκονομία), whereby the patriarch Cyrus had
brought about the re-union of the Monophysites with the Catholic Church. But as hitherto no public decision of the church had
spoken of ’one mode of working,’ or of ’two modes of working’ of Christ, it seemed to him the safest course, that in future
such expressions should be avoided, as the one might lead to Eutychianism, the other to Nestorianism. He reckoned this whole
question among the unprofitable subtilties which endanger the interests of piety. Men should be content to hold fast to this, in
accordance with the hitherto established doctrine of the church, that the self-same Christ works that which is divine and human
in both his natures. Those other questions should be left to the grammarians in the schools. If the Holy Spirit operates in the
faithful, as St. Paul says, in manifold ways how much more must this hold good of the Head himself!" Neander adds in a note:
"Although the theory, of two modes of working" [which is the orthodox doctrine] "lies at the foundation of the very thing he
here asserts, yet he carefully avoided expressing this." In the same sense, Dr. Döllinger, when still in communion with Rome,
stated the doctrine of Honorius, and said (Fables of the Popes, p. 226, Am. ed.): "This doctrine of Honorius, so welcome to
Sergius and the other favorers and supporters of Monotheletism, led to the two imperial edicts, the Ekthesis and the Typus."
(^626) Bellarmin, and Bishop Bartholus (Bartoli) of Feltre, who questioned also the integrity of the letters of Sergius to
Honorius (in his Apol. pro Honorio I., 1750, as quoted by, Döllinger, p. 253, and Hefele, III. 142). Döllinger declares this to
be "a lamentable expedient!’
(^627) So Perrone, Pennachi, Manning. These divines presume to know better than the infallible Pope Leo II., who ex cathedra
denounced Honorius as a heretic.
(^628) So Pope John IV. (640-642), who apologized for his predecessor that he merely meant to reject the notion of two
mutuallyopposing wills, as if Christ had a will tainted with sin (Mansi, X. 683). But nobody dreamed of ascribing a sinful will
to Christ. Bishop Hefele and Cardinal Hergenröther resort substantially to the same apology; see notes at the end of this section.
(^629) Walch, Neander, Gieseler, Baur, Dorner, Kurtz, etc. See note on p. 502.
(^630) Richer, Dupin, Bossuet, Döllinger.