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limit of the l « t of April . They have -U agreed in carrying on and in registe ring , in one uninterrupted series , from year to year , the same succession of numbers for their solar and their lunar cycles , and for the correspond-. Christian
- m years of the aera . No disputes which have occasionally occurred about the proper time of celebrating . their Easter ; no supposed defect in the original Jewish and Christian lunar cycle , which Epiphanius and others after him have called a
vicious cycle ; no anticipation of the full moons , or of the aequinox , arising from a computation of the length of the month , or the year , not perfectly accurate ; no correction of these inaccuracies by any alteration in the table of paschal limits , or by what is called the alteration of the stile ; none
of these tilings , nor any thing else , has ever disturbed the regularity of the succession , has ever broken a link in the chain , or ever prevailed upon aay body of Christians ( whatever a
few individuals may have done ) to deviate into any other year , or any other limit , either before or afteu in the succession , for the year of the crucifixion , than those I have mentioned .
1 do not say that this year has always been called the year 33 , or that the 1 st of April has always been considered as the precise day of the limit : but I say , that however different the denominations of the year may have been , they have all referred to the
same year of real , absolute , physical time ; and that however the limit may have varied a day or two , the reference has always been to the same spot or p lace in the cycle , the ground or site , if 1 may so call it , on which the 1 st of April stands in the original table of paschal limits , and to no other of the
whole nineteen . The earl y Christians might explain , and did explain , differently what Luke has said about the agejof Jesus at his baptism . Some understood hioi as sa that Jesus ha& only begun , o . foers that he had completed his
thirtjeth year , and others again contended hat a greater latitude was included in the word - atom / 9 These , though they a ^ eed in t he year of the cruci"xiou , would all call it a different year Jj Uinst . But the difference of time , as to the erucifixioiK would be nomi-
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nal only , not real . As to the birtlt it would be real . Indeed , it was the year of the birth that was always « Us * puted ; the year of the craeifixioa never . They disputed about the former because they could never reconcile
the spurious chronology , which makes Jesus to be born in thje reign of Herod , with the gospel chronology , which makes him only begin to be thirty years of age some time after John had begun to baptize , in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Csesar . And for this
reason many of the early Christians , that they might avoid all ambiguity , all dispute and controversy , and give offence to nobody , chose to date their years of Christ , not from his birth , but from his crucifixion ; about which there was no contest nor uncertainty . Since the time of the Emperor
Justinian and of DLonysius Exiguus , all Christian churches have invariably considered the year 33 as the year , and the 3 d of April as the day of the crucifixion $ because the table of Dominical letters , or solar cycle , points out that day , and not the 1 st of April , for a Friday . Before this , the Roman Christians connected the crucifixion
with a particular year of their aera taken from the building of their city , and whatever it was , invariably adhered to it : the Greek Christians , as invariably adhered to some particular year of their Olympiads ; and the Jewish Christians to some year of their Jewish aera . And all these
years , however differently denominated , pointed to the same real , absolute time . And that year was , in the sixth century , when the vulgar Christian aera was introduced , called tlic year 33 , and has been so called by all Christian churches ever since . This
year of the crucifixion was the hinge and pivot upon which the whole aera turned . For , as to the birth of Jesus , it was uever pretended that the first year of this aera precisely and exactly
corresponded with that : on the contrary , it wus maintained that he was really horn four years before the commencement of the vulgar < era ; the first year of which was only the nominal , not the real year of his birth .
This wus the last bungling result of many vain attempts to distort the chronology of the gospel , so as to make Jesus contemporary with Herod .
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their Chronology inconsistent with Truth and with itself . 265
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1822, page 265, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2512/page/9/
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