THK DKTKL'.MINATIoN OF KASTKR DAY. 



171 



the Church of Alexandria. A century after the Council, it was 

 assumed that the Bishop of Alexandria had been ordered to compute 

 the date of Easter, but there is no mention in the letter to the 

 Bishop that he was to undertake that duty. There is a tendency 

 among men to attribute too much definiteness to our ancestors. 



Again, on p. 153, the full moon which happens upon, or next after, 

 the 21st day of March is referred to. It was not until A.D. 1700 

 that any attempt was made to regulate a mid-month festival by the 

 astronomical full moon, for the obvious reason that to ordinary 

 observation the moon remained practically full for two or three days 

 together. The direction, therefore, was to observe, not the full moon, 

 but the 14th day of the month; the moon was observed when 

 new, and was supposed to be full 14 days later. We had, therefore, 

 no right to find fault with the use of a " mean full moon," as that 

 expedient was practically an original one. 



In A.D. 1700, however, the German Protestants resolved that 

 Easter should be determined from the actual full moon, as computed 

 by means of the Kudolphine Tables, drawn up by Kepler. They 

 soon, however, give up this plan on account of its complication, and 

 adopted the simpler rule current in the Roman Catholic Church. 

 When the Germans gave up the real full moon the Swedes, however, 

 adopted it, but have relinquished it since the middle of the nine- 

 teenth century. He hoped that history would not repeat itself in 

 this particular, and that there would be no alteration in the calendar 

 which would lead to the founding of a new astronomical sect. 



On p. 169, Dr. Downing referred to the suggestion for having a 

 fixed Easter. This was no novelty : we learned from Epiphanius, 

 in his Refutation of all Heresies, that the Cappaclocians kept March 

 25 as Easter ; others, the Quartoclecimans, kept it on the 14th 

 day of the month in which the 25th of March fell ; St. Martin of 

 Dumes, a sixth century father, who wrote a Treatise on Easter, 

 noted that many Gallican Bishops kept Easter on March 25, that 

 being assumed to be the day of the spring equinox ; hence Lady 

 Day (March 25) is still taken as the quarter day. The Montanists 

 kept Easter on the Sunday which fell on or next after April 6, and 

 were represented as declaring that Easter might thus fall from 

 April G to April 13, though in reality it could only have fallen 

 from April 6 to April 1 2 ; perhaps they erred in their arithmetic as 

 well as in their faith. 



