St. Maximus on Compromising the Faith

St. Maximus the Confessor ca. 580-662

[I]f the saving faith should be annulled simultaneously with erroneous belief for the sake of an arrangement, this kind of so-called arrangement is a complete separation from God and not a union. I mean that tomorrow the…Jews will begin to say: ‘Let’s arrange a peace with one another, and unite, and let us remove circumcision and you baptism, and we won’t fight with each other any more.’ This is what the Arians too once proposed in writing at the time of Constantine the Great, when they said: ‘Let’s remove the words “homoousion” and “heteroousion” and let the churches unite.’ Our God-bearing Fathers didn’t accept this; instead they chose to be persecuted and die rather than pass over in silence an expression which indicated the one supersubstantial Godhead of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And Constantine the Great concurred with those who had made these proposals, as has been recorded by many who diligently wrote about the events of that time. No emperor was able to persuade the Fathers who speak of God to be reconciled with heretics of their times by means of equivocal expressions. Instead they employed clear and authoritative expressions, and ones that corresponded to the teaching that was being enquired into, saying plainly that it is the mark of priests to make an inquiry and to define on the subject of the saving teachings of the Catholic Church. (Record of the Trial, 4)