Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 151 



makes me think that the computers of almanacs will be puzzled, and 

 that the useless discussion of 1818 (when the discrepancy last oc- 

 curred) will be revived, unless some one will forthwith state the 

 reason of the difficulty, I request that you will publish some of the 

 conclusions of the paper to which I refer, which will in due time ap- 

 pear in the work cited : and I hope that the daily papers will give 

 additional currency to the same conclusions ; and I should recom- 

 mend that the same thing should be done in the almanacs. The 

 rule adopted in this country for finding Easter is that of the Roman 

 Catholic Church, as established at what is called the reformation of 

 the Calendar by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582. llie authority for 

 this rule is contained in the papal brief of March 1st, 1582, in which 

 reference is made, for all explanations, to the then forthcoming work 

 of the Jesuit Clavius, to whom both the adjustment and explanation 

 of the Calendar had been entrusted. The British parliament, in 

 adopting the rule of Clavius, made two mistakes in the explanation 

 of that rule. Their explanation is, that Easter Sunday is the Sunday 

 after the full moon which comes on or next after the 21st of March, 

 and that if the full moon fall on a Sunday, Easter Sunday is the next 

 Sunday. 



The two mistakes are as follows : — 



1. Instead of " full moon," they should have said " fourteenth day 

 of the moon, the day of new moon being reckoned as the first." 

 That Easter, as well as the Passover, was always regulated, not by 

 the full moon, but by the fourteenth day of the moon, is of the ut- 

 most historical notoriety. And Clavius says that "none but a few 

 who fancy themselves sharp-sighted ever imagined that the four- 

 teenth of the moon and the full moon were the same in the Church 

 of God." 



2. Instead of the " moon " of the heavens, they ought to have 

 said the " moon of the calendar," which is a very different thing. 

 The moon of the calendar is not even a mean, or uniformly moving 

 moon to which astronomers refer the real moon ; but differs from it 

 intentionally and avowedly, by two classes of arbitrary alterations ; 

 the first class intended for simplicity of calculation, the second for 

 avoiding the possibility of the Christian Easter falling on the actual 

 day of the Jewish Passover. 



In the year 1845, the fourteenth day of the calendar moon falls on 

 Saturday the 22nd of March, whence Easter is rightly made to be 

 Sunday the 23rd, according to the law both of the Roman and English 

 churches, though the English statute does not well explain its own 

 method. With regard to this country, it should be noticed that this 

 statute enacts that Easter shall be kept by the " calendar, tables and 

 rules " annexed to the act : and these agree with Clavius. 



Of course any one is at liberty, as many did in 1818, to think that 

 the statute should be altered ; and certainly, it would be worth while 

 to avoid misconception by repealing the faulty definition, and sub- 

 stituting a better one, in the prayer-books of the established church. 

 But if any one should wish to advocate the repeal of the rules, and 

 the construction of new ones agreeable to the existing definition^ and 



