0123456789
18517289202122341526
18671830112231425617
1872892011223415267
188183011223142561728
1899211122341526718
19029102121324516278
191193011223142661729
19210212132451627819
193301122314266172910
19421213245162781930
195112231426617291021
19621324516278193011
19722314266172910212
198132451627819301122
19931426617291021213

For example, the year 1867. The epact is 25, and we find in the table:

J.F.M.AP.M.JU.JL.AU.S.O.N.D.
New5+45+43+21,312928-272625
Full2019-2019-1817161513-1311+11

When the truth is the day after + is written after the date; when the day before, -. Thus, the new moon of March is on the 6th; the full moon of April is on the 18th.

I now introduce a small paradox of my own; and as I am not able to prove it, I am compelled to declare that any one who shall dissent must be either very foolish or very dishonest, and will make me quite uncomfortable about the state of his soul. This being settled once for all, I proceed to say that the necessity of arriving at the truth about the assertions that the Nicene Council laid down astronomical tests led me to look at Fathers, Church histories, etc. to an extent which I never dreamed of before. One conclusion which I arrived at was, that the Nicene Fathers had a knack of sticking to the question which many later councils could not acquire. In our own day, it is not permitted to Convocation seriously to discuss any one of the points which are bearing so hard upon their resources of defence—the cursing clauses of the Athanasian Creed, for example. And it may be collected that the prohibition arises partly from fear that there is no saying where a beginning, if allowed, would end. There seems to be a suspicion that debate, once let loose, would play up old Trent with the liturgy, and bring the whole book to book. But if any one will examine the real Nicene Creed, without the augmentation, he will admire the way in which the framers stuck to the point, and settled what they had to decide, according to their view of it. With such a presumption of good sense in their favor, it becomes easier to believe in any claim which may be made on their behalf to tact or sagacity in settling any other matter. And I strongly suspect such a claim may be made for them on the Easter question.

I collect from many little indications, both before and after the Council, that the division of the Christian world into Judaical and Gentile, though not giving rise to a sectarian distinction expressed by names, was of far greater force and meaning than historians prominently admit. I took note of many indications of this, but not notes, as it was not to my purpose. If it were so, we must admire the discretion of the Council. The Easter question was the

fighting ground of the struggle: the Eastern or Judaical Christians, with some varieties of usage and meaning, would have the Passover itself to be the great feast, but taken in a Christian sense; the Western or Gentile Christians, would have the commemoration of the Resurrection, connected with the Passover only by chronology. To shift the Passover in time, under its name, Pascha, without allusion to any of the force of the change, was gently cutting away the ground from under the feet of the Conservatives. And it was done in a very quiet way: no allusion to the precise character of the change; no hint that the question was about two different festivals: "all the brethren in the East, who formerly celebrated this festival at the same time as the Jews, will in future conform to the Romans and to us." The Judaizers meant to be keeping the Passover as a Christian feast: they are gently assumed to be keeping, not the Passover, but a Christian feast; and a doctrinal decision is quietly, but efficiently, announced under the form of a chronological ordinance. Had the Council issued theses of doctrine, and excommunicated all dissentients, the rupture of the East and West would have taken place earlier by centuries than it did. The only place in which I ever saw any part of my paradox advanced, was in an article in the Examiner newspaper, towards the end of 1866, after the above was written.

A story about Christopher Clavius, the workman of the new Calendar. I chanced to pick up "Albertus Pighius Campensis de æquinoctiorum solsticiorumque inventione... Ejusdem de ratione Paschalis celebrationis, De que Restitutione ecclesiastici Kalendarii," Paris, 1520, folio.[[760]] On the title-page were decayed words followed by "..hristophor.. C..ii, 1556 (or 8)," the last blank not entirely erased by time, but showing the lower halves of an l and of an a, and