At a later time, he was brought from Perberis, with his disciple, Anastasius, back to Constantinople.(83) A Synod, there held, excommunicated them both, as well as Pope St. Martin, St. Sophronius, and all the orthodox.(84) The second Anastasius, who had been a Nuncio, was also brought, and the Synod passed on all three the sentence:—“As the Synod has passed against you its canonical sentence, it only remains that you be subject to the severity of the civil laws for your impiety. And though no punishment could be proportionate to your crimes, we, leaving you to the just Judge in respect of the greater punishment, grant you the indulgence of the present life, modifying the strict severity of the laws. We order that you be delivered to the prefect, and by him taken to the guard: that you be then scourged; that in you, Maximus and Anastasius, and Anastasius, the instrument of your iniquity, the blaspheming tongue be cut out to the roots, and then your right hand, which has served your blaspheming mind, be cut off: that thus deprived of these execrable members, you be carried through the twelve quarters of this imperial city, and then be delivered to perpetual banishment and prison, to lament for the remainder of your errors.” This sentence was carried out by the prefect. St. Maximus was then transported to Lazika, in Colchis: the other two to different castles. As Maximus, from weakness, could neither ride nor bear a carriage, he was borne on a sort of bed made of branches to the Castle of Schemarum. St. Maximus foretold the day of his death, which took place on the 13th August, 662, when he was eighty-two years old. At that moment the chalif Muawiah had about completed the first year in which he had fixed the seat of the Saracenic empire at Damascus: and the “rout of heathen” from which the Byzantine Consul had anticipated deliverance, held in peril during the whole of Muawiah’s reign to 680 the imperial city on the Bosphorous, where “the lord of the world” usually resided. CHAPTER IV. CHRISTENDOM AND ISLAM. We are now come to the greatest of contrasts and oppositions in human history—to the Church of Christ, the foundress of nations, and to Islam, her counterfeit and opponent; to the law which went forth from Jerusalem and struck its perpetual root in Rome, and to the force which went forth from Mecca, tarried for a while in Damascus and Bagdad, and then encamped in the city of Constantine. Two reigns which never have ceased and never can cease to counterwork each other, the reign of the Word and the reign of the Sword.