PASCHAL MOOK 



regulated tfre calendar, and supplied those rules and explanations 

 which are still prefixed to the Book of Common Prayer of the 

 Established Church. Professor De Morgan showed that the 

 Legislature committed the error of taking the real moon of the 

 heavens, as that by the phases of which Easter was to be 

 determined, although the authorities from which they borrowed 

 their rules, and which it was their intention to follow, most 

 expressly disclaimed the celestial moon, and even showed the 

 objections against taking it for the determination of the date of 

 Easter. But the blunders did not end here. The professor 

 further showed that not only the British Parliament, but astro- 

 nomers themselves, and even many authors who had written 

 .expressly on the calendar, were altogether ignorant of the fact 

 that it was not the day of the full, even of the ecclesiastical moon, 

 but the 14th day of that moon's age, by which Easter was to be 

 determined. Nevertheless, as the terms of the rule for determin- 

 ing Easter, properly understood, were correct, although the 

 explanations and commentaries appended to them by the Legis- 

 lature were erroneous; and as it was the evident intention of 

 the Act to adopt the same method of determining the date of 

 Easter as was used in the Roman Catholic Church; the com- 

 puters of the almanacks were not misled by the wrong expla- 

 nations, but continued to fix Easter as it was fixed in the Roman 

 Church, and as in fact it was intended to be fixed in the Church of 

 England. 



36. The conditions which determine from year to year the date 

 of Easter being well understood, the dates of other moveable 

 feasts, all of which have fixed relations to Easter, will be deter- 

 mined. Some of these come before, others follow, Easter. As 

 Easter, therefore, advances or recedes in date, it pushes forward 

 the latter, and draws after it the former. 



37. The following short explanation of the moveable feasts of 

 the Church, and their dependance on Easter, which we borrow 

 from Professor De Morgan's " Book of Almanacks," cannot be 

 improved : 



" In the English nomenclature Easter Sunday has always the 

 six Sundays in Lent immediately preceding, and the^t-e Sundays 

 after Easter immediately following. Of these the nearest to 

 Easter before and after are Palm Sunday and Low Sunday ; the 

 farthest before and after are Quadragesima (first in Lent), and 

 Rogation Sunday (fifth after Easter). Preceding all these are, in 

 reverse order, Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, Septuagesima : and 

 following them in direct order, are the Sunday after Ascension 

 (Holy Thursday, Thursday five weeks after Easter), Whit 

 Sunday and Trinity Sunday. So that Easter Sunday, as it takes 



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