A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

666 A Source Book for Ancient Church History[608]nor that of Peter, whose traditions you knowingly contradict.…For John, keeping the paschal time according to the decree ofthe Mosaic law, had no regard to the first day after the Sabbath[i.e., that it should fall on Sunday], and you who celebrate Easteronly on the first day after the Sabbath do not practise this. Peterkept Easter Sunday between the fifteenth and the twenty-firstday of the moon, and you do not do this, but keep Easter Sundayfrom the fourteenth to the twentieth day of the moon, so thatyou often begin Easter on the thirteenth moon in the evening …besides this in your celebration of Easter, you utterly excludethe twenty-first day of the moon, which the law ordered to beespecially observed.”To this Colman rejoined: “Did Anatolius, a holy man, andmuch commended in ecclesiastical history, act contrary to theLaw and the Gospel when he wrote that Easter was to be celebratedfrom the fourteenth to the twentieth? Is it to be believedthat our most reverend Father Columba and his successors, menbeloved of God, who kept Easter after the same manner, thoughtor acted contrary to the divine writings? Whereas there weremany among them whose sanctity was attested by heavenly signsand the workings of miracles, whose life, customs, disciplineI never cease to follow, not questioning that they are saints inheaven.”Wilfrid said: “It is evident that Anatolius was a most holy andlearned and commendable man; but what have you to do withhim, since you do not observe his decrees? For he, following therule of truth in his Easter, appointed a cycle of nineteen years,which you are either ignorant of, or if you know yet despise,though it is kept by the whole Church of Christ.… Concerningyour Father Columba and his followers … I do not deny thatthey were God's servants, and beloved by Him, who, with rusticsimplicity but pious intentions, have themselves loved Him.…But as for you and your companions, you certainly sin, if, havingheard the decrees of the Apostolic See, or rather of the universal