If everyone else change, will you?
"In 662, an enraged Constans put him [Maximus] on trial again. The judges pressed Maximus with the argument that everyone else in the Eastern Church had submitted to the Typos. How dare he, a lone monk, defy the voice of the Church? Maximus had his answer: “Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach any Gospel to you other than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed,” he quoted from Galatians 1:8. Was only Maximus in the right, then, and everyone else wrong about Monotheletism, the judges asked? Did he think he alone was saved? Maximus’s response echoes down the centuries: “May God grant that I do not condemn anyone, nor say that I alone am saved. But I prefer to die rather than violate my conscience by defecting from what I believe about God.” Europe was not to see so heroic a sight again, until John Huss stood alone before his persecutors at the Council of Constance in 1415. This time Maximus’s punishment was more brutal: soldiers ripped out his tongue and chopped off his right hand, that he might speak and write no more. Constans then banished him to Lazica, on the south-eastern coast of the Black Sea, where Maximus died a few months later. It was for his unbending confession of faith amid these cruelties that the Church later hailed Maximus as “the Confessor”.2000 Years of Christ's Power Volume 1: The Age of the Early Church Fathers: Part 1
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