g to
formation of sects: there may have been difficulties, and discussions about
them. The Metonic cycle, presently mentioned, must have been used by many,
perhaps most, churches.

2. The question came before the Nicene Council (A.D. 325) not as an
astronomical, but as a doctrinal, question: it was, in fact, this, Shall
the _passover_[743] be treated as a part of Christianity? The Council
resolved this question in the negative, and the only information on its
premises and conclusion, or either, which comes from itself, is contained
in the following sentence of the synodical epistle, which epistle is
preserved by Socrates[744] and Theodoret.[745] "We also send {359} you the
good news concerning the unanimous consent of all in reference to the
celebration of the most solemn feast of Easter, for this difference also
has been made up by the assistance of your prayers: so that 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_, and to
all who have of old observed _our manner_ of celebrating Easter." This is
all that can be found on the subject: none of the stories about the Council
ordaining the astronomical mode of finding Easter, and introducing the
Metonic cycle into ecclesiastical reckoning, have any contemporary
evidence: the canons which purport to be those of the Nicene Council do not
contain a word about Easter; and this is evidence, whether we suppose those
canons to be genuine or spurious.

3. The astronomical dispute about a lunar cycle for the prediction of
Easter either commenced, or became prominent, by the extinction of greater
ones, soon after the time of the Nicene Council. Pope Innocent I[746] met
with difficulty in 414. S. Leo,[747] in 454, ordained that Easter of 455
should be April 24; which is right. It is useless to record details of
these disputes in a summary: the result was, that in the year 463, Pope
Hilarius[748] employed Victorinus[749] of Aquitaine to correct the
Calendar, and Victorinus formed a rule which lasted until the sixteenth
century. He combined the Metonic cycle and the solar cycle presently
described. But {360} this cycle bears the name of Dionysius Exiguus,[750] a
Scythian settled at Rome, about A.D. 530, who adapted it to his new yearly
reckoning, when he abandoned the era of Diocletian as a commencement, and
constructed that which is now in common use.

4. With Dionysius, if not befo