that there must be a human will, for he who has no will can neither obey nor be commanded. It is most certain that the Divine will cannot be commanded, as it recognizes no will superior to itself. The obedience of Christ, therefore, to his Father, proves that he must have had a human will: "Qua," says Pope Agatho, "a lumine veritatis se adeo separavit, ut audeat dicere, Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum voluntate suæ Divinitatis Patri obedisse, cui est æqualis in omnibus, et vult ipse quoque in omnibus, quod Pater?"

5. We pass over other Scripture arguments, and come to Tradition, and first of all, we shall see what the Fathers who lived before the rise of the heresy said on the subject. St. Ambrose says (2): "Quod autem ait: Non mea voluntas, sed tua fiat, suam, ad hominem retulit; Patris, ad Divinitatem: voluntas enim hominis, temporalis; voluntas Divinitatis, æterna." St. Leo, in his Epistle 24 (a. 10, c. 4), to St. Flavian, against Eutyches, thus writes: "Qui verus est Deus, idem verus est homo; et nullam est in hac unitate mendacium, dum invicem sunt, et humilitas hominis, et altitudo Deitatis.... Agit enim utraque forma cum alterius communione, quod proprium est; Verbo scilicet operante, quod Verbi est, et carne exequente, quod carnis est." I omit many other authorities from St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Jerome, and others referred to by Petavius (3). Sophronius compiled two whole books of them against Sergius, as we find from the petition of Stephen Duresius to the Council of Lateran, under Martin I., in 649. It is proved also by the Creeds, in which it is professed that Christ is at the same time true God and true man, perfect in both natures. If Christ had not human will, one of the natural faculties of the soul, he would not be a perfect man, no more than he would be perfect God, if he had not Divine will. The Councils whose Decrees we have already quoted against Nestorius, have defined that there are two natures in Christ, distinct and perfect in all their properties, and that could not be the fact, unless each of the two natures had its proper natural will and natural operation. A Portuguese writer, Hippolitus, in his Fragments against Vero, from the distinction of the different operations in Christ, argued that there was a distinction of the two natures, because if there was but one will and one operation in Christ, there would be but one nature: "Quæ sunt inter se ejusdem operationis, et cognitionis, et omnino idem patiuntur, nullam naturæ differentiam recipiunt."

6. All these things being taken into consideration, in the Third General Council of Constantinople, under Pope Agatho, it was thought proper to condemn, in one Decree (Act. 18), all the heresies against the incarnation condemned in the five preceding General Councils. Here is the Decree, in the very words: “Assequti quoque sancta quinque universalia Concilia, et sanctos atque probabiles Patres, consonanterque confiteri definientes, D. N. Jesum (2) St. Ambros. l. 20, in Luc. n. 59 & 60. (3) Petav. l. 3, de Incarn. c. 8 & 9.

Christum verum Deum nostrum, unum de sancta, et consubstantiali, et vitæ originem præbente Trinitate, perfectum in Deitate, et perfectum eundem in humanitate, Deum vere, et hominem vere, eundem ex anima rationali et corpore, consubstantialem Patri secundum Deitatem, et consubstantialem nobis secundum humanitatem, per omnia similem nobis absque peccato; ante secula quidem ex Patre genitum secundum Deitatem, in ultimis diebus autem eundem propter nos et propter nostram salutem de Spiritu Sancto, et Maria Virgine proprie, et veraciter Dei Genitrice secundum humanitatem, unum eundemque Christum Filium Dei unigenitum in duabus naturis inconfuse, inconvertibiliter, inseparabiliter, indivise cognoscendum, nusquam extincta harum naturarum differentia propter unitatem, salvataque magis proprietate utriusque naturæ, et in unam Personam, et in unam subsistentiam concurrente, non in duas Personas partitam, vel divisam, sed unum eundemque unigenitum Filium Dei, Verbum D. N. Jesum Christum; et duas naturales voluntates in eo, et duas naturales operationes indivise, inconvertibiliter, inseparabiliter, inconfuse secundum Ss. Patrum doctrinam, adeoque prædicamus; et duas naturales voluntates, non contrarias, absit, juxta quod impii asseruerunt Hæretici, sed sequentem ejus humanam voluntatem, et non resistentem, vel reluctantem, sed potius, et subjectam Divinæ ejus, atque omnipotenti voluntati..... His igitur cum omni undique cautela, atque diligentia a nobis formatis, definimus aliam Fidem nulli licere proferre, aut conscribere, componere, aut fovere, vel etiam aliter docere."

7. The principal proofs from reason alone against this heresy have been already previously given. First.-Because Christ having a perfect human nature, he must have, besides, a human will, without which his humanity would be imperfect, being deprived of one of its natural powers. Secondly.-Because Christ obeyed, prayed, merited, and satisfied for us, and all this could not be done without a created human will, for it would be absurd to attribute it to the Divine will. Thirdly.-We prove it from that principle of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, adopted by the other Fathers, that what the Word assumed he healed, and hence St. John of Damascus (3) concludes that as he healed human will he must have had it: “Si non assumsit humanam voluntatem, remedium ei non attulit, quod primum sauciatum erat; quod enim assumtum non est, nec est curatum, ut ait Gregorius Theologus. Ecquid enim offenderat, nisi voluntas?"

SEC. II.-OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.

8. THE Monothelites object, first, that prayer of St. Dionisius in his Epistle to Caius: "Deo viro facto unam quandum Theandricam,

(3) St. Joan. Damas. Ora. de duab. Chris. Volunt.

66

seu Deivirilem operationem expressit in vita;" that is, that in the God made man there is one Theandric or human-divine operation. We answer, with Sophronius, that this passage was corrupted by the Monothelites, by changing the word, "novam quandam" into unam quandam," or a new sort of Theandric operation, into some one Theandric operation. This was noticed in the Third Council of Lateran, in which St. Martin commanded the Notary Paschasias to read the Greek copy that was preserved, and the words were found to be novam quandam, &c., and not unam, &c., and this was in no wise opposed to the Catholic doctrine, and can be explained two ways in an orthodox sense. First.-As St. John of Damascus says, every operation (1) performed by Christ by the Divine and human nature is Theandric, or human-divine, because it is the operation of a Man-God, and is attributed to the Person of Christ, the term, at the same time, of both the Divine and human nature. The second sense, as Sophronius and St. Maximus lay down, is this, that the new Theandric operation St. Dionisius speaks of should be restricted to those operations of Christ alone, in which the Divine and human natures concur, and, therefore, there are three distinct operations to be noted in him: first, those which peculiarly belong to human nature alone, as walking, eating, sitting, and so forth; secondly, those which belong purely to the Divine nature, as remitting sins, working miracles, and the like; and, thirdly, those which proceed from both natures, as healing the sick by touching them, raising the dead by calling them, &c.; and it is of operations of this sort that the passage of St. Dionisius is to be explained.

We

9. Secondly.-They object that St. Athanasius (2) admits the Divine Will only, "voluntatem Deitatis tantum;" but we answer that this does not exclude human will, but only that opposing will which springs from sin, as the context proves. Thirdly.-They object that St. Gregory of Nazianzen (3) says that the will of Christ was not opposed to God, as it was totally Deified: "Christi velle non fuisse Deo contrarium, utpote Deificatum totum." answer, with St. Maximus and St. Agatho, that there is not the least doubt but that St. Gregory admitted two wills, and the whole meaning of this expression is that the human will of Christ was never opposed to the Divine will. They object, fourthly, that St. Gregory of Nyssa, writing against Eunomius, says, that the Deity worked out the salvation of man; the suffering, he says, was of the flesh, but the operation was of God: "Operatur vere Deitas per corpus, quod circa ipsam est omnium salutem, ut sit carnis quidem passio, Dei autem operatio." This objection was answered in the Sixth Council, for the Saint having said that the humanity of Christ suffered, admitted by that that Christ operated by the

(1) St. Jo. Damas. 7. 3, de Fide Orthodox. c. 19. (2) St. Athanas. in 7. de Adv. Chri. (3) St. Greg. Naz. Orat. 2 de Filio.

humanity. All that St. Gregory in fact wanted to prove against Eunomius was, that the sufferings and the operations of Christ received a supreme value from the Person of the Word who sustains his humanity, and therefore he attributed these operations to the Word. They object, fifthly, that St. Cyril of Alexandria (4) says that Christ showed some cognate operation, "quandam cognatam operationem." We reply, that from the context it is manifest that the Saint speaks of the miracles of Christ in which his Divine nature operated by his omnipotence, and his human nature by the contact, commanded by his human will; and thus this operation is called by the Saint an associated one. Sixthly, they object that many of the Fathers called the human nature of Christ the instrument of the Divinity. We answer, that these Fathers never understood the humanity to have been an inanimate instrument, which operated nothing of itself, as the Monothelites say, but their meaning was that the Word being united with the humanity, governed it as its own, and operated through its powers and faculties. Finally, they oppose to us some passages of Pope Julius, of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and some writings of Menna to Vigilius, and of Vigilius to Menna; but our reply to this is that these passages are not authentic, but were foisted into the works of the Fathers by the Apollinarists and Eutychians. It was proved in the Sixth Council (Act. XIV.), that the writings attributed to Menna and Vigilius were forged by the Monothelites.

10. The Monothelites endeavour to prop up their opinions by several other reasons. If you admit two wills in Christ, they say, you must also admit an opposition between them. But we, Catholics, say that this supposition is totally false; the human will of Christ never could oppose the Divine will, for he took our nature, and was made in all things like us, but with the exception of sin; as St. Paul says (Heb. iv. 15), he was "one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin." He never, therefore, had those movements we have to violate the Divine law, but his will was always conformable to the Divine will. The Fathers make a distinction between the natural and arbitrary will; the natural will is the power itself of wishing, the arbitrary will is the power of wishing anything, either good or bad. Christ had the natural human will, but not the arbitrary human will, for he always wished, and could only wish what was most conformable to the Divine will, and hence he says: "I do always the things that please him" (John, viii. 29). It is because the Monothelites have not made this distinction of the will that they deny altogether to Christ human will: "Sicut origo erroris Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum fuit, quod non satis distinguerent personam, et naturam; sic et Monothelitis, et quod nescirent quia inter voluntatem Naturalem et Personalem,

(4) St. Cyril, Alex. l. 4, in Joan.

sive Arbitrarium discriminis interesset, hoc in causa fuisse, ut unam in Christo dicerent voluntatem" (5).

11. They say, secondly, that there being only one Person there. must be only one will, because, the Mover being but one, the faculty by which he moves the inferior powers must be but one likewise. We answer, that where there is but one Person and one nature there can be only one will and one operation, but where there is one Person and two natures, as the Divine and human nature in Christ, we must admit two wills and two distinct operations, corresponding to the two natures. They say, very properly, that the will and the operations are not multiplied according as the Persons are multiplied, for in the case where one nature is the term of several Persons, as is the case in the Most Holy Trinity, then in this nature there is only one will and one operation alone, common to all the Persons included in the term of the nature. Here the Monothelites have reason on their side, for the Mover is but one. But it is quite otherwise when the Person is one of the two natures, for then the Mover, although but one, has to move two natures, by which he operates, and, consequently, he must have two wills and two operations.

12. They make a third objection. The operations, they say, belong to two Persons, and, consequently, when the Person is but one, the operation must be but one likewise. We answer, that it is not always the case that when there is but one Person that there is but one operating faculty, but when there are more Persons than one, then there must be more than one operating faculty. There are three Persons in God, but only one operation common to all three, because the Divine nature is one and indivisible in God. But as in Jesus Christ there are two distinct natures, there are, therefore, two wills, by which he operates, and two operations corresponding to each nature; and, although all the operations, both of the Divine and human nature are attributed to the Word, which terminates and sustains the two natures, still the will and operations of the Divine nature should not be confounded with those of the human nature; neither are the two natures confused because the Person is one.

REFUTATION X.

THE HERESY OF BERENGARIUS, AND THE PRETENDED REFORMERS, CONCERNING THE MOST HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST.

1. MOSHEIM, the Protestant ecclesiastical historian, asserts (1) that in the ninth century, the exact nature of the faith of the body

(5) St. Joan. Dames Orat. de 2 Christ. Volent. (1) Mosh. His. t. 3, Cent. IX. c. 3, p.

1175.