Cagter Dog. HE festival of Easter is at once a distinctively more glorious edition of the Jewish Passover; and may, in this sense, date its first origin from the time when Moses made it incumbent upon his people annually to commemorate the safety of the youth of Israel from the angelic vengeance that smote down the first-born of Egypt. From that period to the present there has been no considerable solution of its observance. The Apostles who merged their Judaism in the broader waters of Christianity, carried into their developed faith their reverence for a feast that after the Crucifixion had a twofold significance, of which the later-acquired was infinitely the more glorious, because the more spiritual. They enjoined likewise upon their followers the celebration of the renewed Passover; so that it is one of the singular honours of Easter, that it alone whilst the earliest or Apostolic authority for the celebration of other Christian seasons is to be approximately established by inference and varying probabilities-rests upon absolute Scripture precept and Apostolic injunction :-" Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast" (1 Cor. v., 7, 8). There is not, then, as there never has been, any room for dispute about the origin of the Paschal festival; although when we turn to the time at which it was thought the festival ought to be kept, we shall find a plentiful divergence of custom and opinion. The followers of St. John and St. Philip on the one side were early at variance with the followers of St. Peter and St. Paul on the other. When Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, and representative of the Jewish and other Asiatic Churches, visited Rome in A.D. 158, he and Anicetus, Bishop of the latter city, mutually endeavoured to win over each other to their respective usage. There was no conversion, however, and there was no quarrel. "Like stout champions both kept their ground; and like good Christians kept also the peace of the Church." But the charitable agreement to differ could not be secured for ever; and intolerance on one side and the other, in spite of the noble protest of Irenæus, presently manifested itself. The question of the time for celebrating Easter continued to agitate Christendom till, in the year 325, the Emperor Constantine summoned the Council of Nicæa, one of the cardinal objects of which was to procure the uniformity of Easter practice. The account of the Paschal dispute occupies a considerable space in the pages. of all ecclesiastical historians, from Eusebius downwards; and Bingham may especially be mentioned as having treated the matter with his usual learned exhaustiveness. The whole question is readily accessible in almost any degree of detail to which an enquirer may desire to pursue it. We thankfully take advantage, when it becomes necessary to present an abstract of what is now at best a rather dry and flavourless topic, of a pen which is accustomed to impart animation to subjects little susceptible of living or pictorial treatment. The principal landmarks are preserved, and they are all that is necessary. "The first of the two questions which remained (after the settlement of the, creed) for the decision of the Council of Nicæa-the first in importance, if not in order of discussion-was the ques VARIOUS TIMES OF CELEBRATION. 195 tion of Easter. It was the most ancient controversy in the Church. It was the only one which had come down from the time when the Jewish and Christian communities were indistinguishable. It was the only one which grew directly out of events in the Gospel History. Its very name (the Quartodeciman,' the Fourteenth-day' concontroversy) was derived, not from the Christian or Gentile, but the Jewish calendar. The briefest statement of it will here suffice. Was the Christian Passover (for the word was still preserved, and by the introduction of the German word 'Easter,' we somewhat lose the force of the connection) to be celebrated on the same day as the Jewish, the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, or on the following Sunday? This was the fundamental question, branching out into others as the controversy became entangled with the more elaborate institution of the Christian fast of forty days, as also with the astronomical difficulties in the way of fixing its relations to the vernal equinox. On one side were the old, historical, apostolical traditions; on the other side, the new, Christian, Catholic spirit, striving to part company with its ancient Jewish birth-place. The Eastern Church, at least in part, as was natural, took the former, the Western the latter, view. At the time when. the Council was convened at Nicæa, the Judaic time was kept by the Churches of Syria, Mesopotamia, Cilicia, and Proconsular Asia; the Christian time by the Churches of the West, headed by Rome, and also, as it would seem, the Eastern Churches of Egypt, Greece, Palestine, and Pontus. It was a diversity of practice which probably shocked the Emperor's desire for uniformity almost as much as the diversity of doctrine. The Church appeared (this was the expression of the time) 'to go halting on one leg.'* 'The sight of some Churches fasting on the same day when others were rejoicing, and of two Passovers in one * Ath. ad Afros.; c. 5: ¿xwλeve. year, was against the very idea of Christian unity."' 'The celebration of it in the same day as was kept by the wicked race that put the Saviour to death was an impious absurdity.' The first of these reasons determined that uniformity was to be enforced. The second determined that the elder, or Jewish, practice must give way to the Christian innovation. "We know nothing of the details of the debate. Probably, the combined influence of the churches of Rome and of Egypt, of Hosius and of Eusebius, backed by the authority of the Emperor, was too great for resistance. The observance of Easter, from that time, was reduced to almost complete uniformity. Cilicia had already given way before the decree was issued. Mesopotamia and Syria accepted the decree, at a solemn Council held at Antioch within twenty years (Tillemont, vi., 666). * "Three small sects, indeed, in each of those provinces still maintained their protest against the innovation of the Nicene Council as late as the fifth century, almost after the fashion of the modern Dissenters of Russia; abjuring the slightest intercourse with the established Churches which had made the change, and ascribing the adoption of the Nicene Decree to the influence of the Emperor Constantine fixing the day to suit the Emperor's birth-day, much as the corresponding communities in Russia ascribe the alterations against which they protest to the influence of Peter. But these were isolated exceptions. Through the rest of the Church the Jewish observance died out. Whatever subsequent troubles arose concerning the observance of Easter had no connection with this original diversity; and the Nicene Council may fairly claim the credit of having extinguished at least one bitter controversy, which had once seemed interminable, and of laying down *The Novatians of Constantinople (Soc. v. 21), the Audians in Mesopotamia (Epiph. Hær. 70), the remaining Quartodecimans in Asia Minor (ib. 50). ORIGIN OF THE GOLDEN NUMBER. 197 at least one rule which is still observed in every Church, East and West, Protestant and Catholic. "Even in details, the mode of observance which still prevails was then first prescribed. Besides the original and more important question, whether the Paschal Feast should be observed on the Jewish or the Christian day, had ariser. another question, occasioned by the difficulty of rightly adjusting the cycle of the lunar year; from which it resulted, that, even amongst those who followed the more general Christian practice, Easter was observed sometimes twice or three times, sometimes not at all. It was now determined, once for all, that the Sunday should be kept which fell most nearly after the full moon of the vernal equinox. For the facilitation of this observance, two measures were taken; one of which is remarkable as still guiding the calculations of Christendom, the other as having given rise to an important custom, long since obsolete. "The table of the Golden Number in the Prayer Book first originated in the Council-chamber of Nicæa. When the task of adapting the cycle of the lunar year to the Paschal question was proposed, the Council would naturally turn to the most learned of its members to accomplish the work. That member was unquestionably Eusebius of Cæsarea (Tillemont, vi., 668), who devoted himself to the work, and in the course of it composed an elaborate treatise on the Paschal Feast, which he presented to his Imperial master, who gratefully acknowledged it as a gigantic, almost inconceivable, enterprize; and gave orders, that, if possible, it should be translated into Latin, for the use of the Western Church. 66 "Whilst this work was preparing, the Council looked to another quarter for immediate and constant help. If Eusebius of Cæsarea was the most learned individual at hand, the most learned body represented at Nicea was the Church of Alexandria. It is interesting to see how the ancient wisdom of Egypt still maintained its fame, even in |