In(36) rank this council stands near to the General Councils; its twenty canons being issued by Pope Martin under anathema upon matters of faith are as binding on the Church now as when they were first published. The creed of this Council is a simple repetition and exhibition of the creed of the Council of Chalcedon, until we come to the addition which at once transfixes the heresy and sets forth the faith. After the words “we believe one and the same only-begotten Son, God, the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ,” the addition runs, “and we believe as Two Natures of the same, united without confusion, so likewise Two Natural Wills, the divine and the human, and Two Natural Operations, the divine and the human, for the perfect and unfailing assurance that He is truly perfect God and perfect Man in very deed, one and the same our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, willing and working divinely and humanly our salvation, as the prophets of old and our Lord Jesus Christ Himself taught us, and the creed of the holy fathers handed down, and in general all the holy universal Councils and the whole band of approved doctors in the Catholic Church. This, in agreement with them all according to their inspired teaching, we one and all confess and define.” Among the documents read at the Lateran Council was one from the whole African episcopate addressed to Pope Theodorus three years before, in 646, in the following titles: “To our most blessed Lord, seated in the apostolic headship, the Father of Fathers, Theodorus, most holy Pope and Chief Shepherd of all Prelates, Columbus Bishop of the first See of the Byzacene Council, and Reparatus Bishop of the first See of the Mauritanian Council, and with us all the bishops of the three Councils of Africa.” It is to be noted that the Archbishop of Carthage is not mentioned, for Fortunatus was elected somewhat later to take the place of a Monothelite. “No one can question that a great and neverfailing spring of grace wells forth from your Apostolic See, enriching all Christians. Thence in abundance rivulets come forth, irrigating the whole Christian world, whence, O Father of Fathers, in honour of most holy Peter, your Apostolic See has been appointed, by divine decree in a peculiar and unique manner, to search into and to treat the sacred doctrines of the Church, receiving which as truly handed down it is the most necessary function of the high priest of that supreme and apostolic See to certify.” Then the African bishops, by quoting, made their own that famous answer given by Pope Innocent I. to the African bishops in the time of St. Augustine, 230 years before. “This obedience,” they proceed, “we humbly render to your apostolic supremacy, and beseech the Pope to do away with the hateful novelty which has sprung up in the Church of Constantinople.”