were some further writings presented by Macarius and one of his disciples still awaiting examination. Among these documents was the first letter of Honorius to Sergius I of Constantinople. The legates, apparently without any reluctance, accepted the necessity of condemning Honorius. They must have felt that any other course of action would leave the door open for a revival of monothelitism. Their conduct in this respect is the more noteworthy because the Sixth General Council acted throughout on the assumption that the doctrinal definitions of the Roman Pontiff were irreformable. The council had not met to deliberate but to bring about submission to the epistle of Pope St. Agatho — an uncompromising assertion of papal infallibility — addressed to it. At the close of the council Macarius and five others were sent to Rome "as the place they were more likely to be converted from their errors". This was done at the request of the council and not, as Hefele makes it appear, at the request of Macarius and his adherents. Macarius and three others who still held out were confined in different monasteries (see Liber Pontificalis, Leo II). Later on, Pope Benedict II tried for thirty days to persuade Macarius to recant. This attempt was quoted in the first session of the Seventh General Council as a precedent for the restoration of bishops who had fallen from the Faith. Baronius gives reasons for supposing that Benedict's purpose was to restore Macarius to his patriarchal dignity, the patriarch who had succeeded him having just died (Annales, ann. 685). The profession of faith in the Eucharist, in his "Ecthesis", is perhaps the earliest instance of a reference to this doctrine in a formal creed. To Macarius the Eucharist was a palmary argument against Nestorianism. The flesh and blood in the Eucharist is not mere flesh and blood, he argued, for how else could it be life-giving? He contended that it is life-giving because it is the own flesh and blood of the Word, which being God is by nature Life. Macarius develops this argument in a manner which shows how shadowy the line was which separated the Monothelite from the Monophysite. See also Honorius I Councils of Constantinople References Sources 7th-century archbishops People declared heretics by the first seven ecumenical councils Greek Orthodox Patriarchs of Antioch 7th-century Byzantine writers