The banquet of Jupiter. The Circensian games. The head of Tau- | All Saints, Benignus, Mary

3 III Nonas

4 Pridie Nonas

5 Nonis Nov.

6 VIII Idus

7 VII Idus

Brumalia, or festivals in honour of Bacchus for the space of 30 days. St. John of the cross, Flora

Observations on the Progressive Improvement of the Roman Calendar; from the Days of Romulus, about 730 Years before Christ, to the present Time.

THE ROMAN CALENDAR, before the time of Julius Cæsar, was very defective: in the reign of Romulus, the first king of Rome, the science of astronomy was so little understood in Italy, that the Calendar was made to consist of ten months, and the year of only 304 days. The names of the ten months were in order as follows:-March, April, May, June, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. Besides the 304 days, Romulus is said to have intercalated days without name, to make up the number of 360; but whether this was the case, or in what way these days were intercalated, cannot be determined; as history, with reference to this point, is extremely obscure. The months March, May, Quintilis, and October, contained 31 days each; and the other six, only 30 days each; as may be seen in the following Table, which exhibits the state of the Roman Calendar about 730 years previously to the Incarnation:

In the reign of Numa Pompilius, the second king of the Romans, the Calendar was very much improved. This monarch, by means of the instructions he received from Pythagoras, the prince of the Italian philosophers, adopted very nearly the same kind of year which the Greeks then used; with this principal exception, that he assigned to every one of his years 355 days, which is one day more than the Grecian and Rabbinical years usually contained. The reformation of the Calendar of Romulus, consisted in taking away one day from April, Jane, Sextilis, September, November, and December; (the day after the Ides of these months being named the XVIIth before the Calends of the ensuing one,) and then adding these six days to the 51 which the year of Romulus wanted, to make up his own of 355 days: with these 57 days he made two new months, viz. January and February, the former of which was the first, and the other the last month of his year; assigning to the former 29, and to the latter 28 days. In order to make his year equal to that which the Greeks used in their Olympiads, Numa is said to have intercalated 82 days in every eight years, in the following manner-At the end of the first two years, an intercalation of 22 days; at the end of the next two, an intercalation of 23 days; at the end of the third two, an intercalation of 22 days; and at the end of the last two, an intercalation of the remaining 15 days. The Calendar of Numa Pompilius, (with the slight variation in it at the time of the Decemviri, about 452, B. C. which consisted in constituting February the second instead of the last month,) continued in use among the Romans till the time of Julius. Cæsar, who, perceiving the great inconveniences that resulted from not making the civil year equal in length to the solar revo

Further Observations on the Roman Calendar.

lution through the 12 signs of the zodiac, employed Sosigenes of Alexandria, (esteemed the greatest astronomer of his time,) to reform the Calendar in such a way that the seasons of the year might perpetually correspond to the same months. As, according to the calculations of Sosigenes, the solar ecliptical revolution took up about 365 days six hours, it was found necessary to lengthen the civil year at least ten days, making it to consist of 365 days, instead of 355; and to make a proper compensation for the six hours which the solar year exceeds 365 days, every fourth year was proposed to be an intercalary one, containing 366 days. Julius Cæsar, by public edict, accordingly ordered these corrections to be made; and the Calendar, thus corrected, is the same as that already given in the preceding Table, with the Festivals, &c. of the ancient Romans.

In consequence of the ignorance of the priests, a considerable error was committed in the first 36 years after the Julian reformation of the Calendar; for the priests imagined that the fourth year in which the intercalation should be made, was to be computed from that in which the preceding intercalation took place, by which means they left only two common years instead of three between the two intercalary ones. Consequently, twelve days, instead of nine, were intercalated in 36 years, an error too considerable to escape the notice of the Augustan age; and, accordingly, the emperor directed that no intercalation should be made for the first twelve years, that the three superfluous days might be gradually dropped, and that the intercalations should be afterwards regulated in such a manner that three common years should continually intervene. This last alteration of the Calendar continued without any interruption till the pontificate of Gregory XIII. in the latter part of the 16th century, when he gave orders that the Roman Calendar should be again reformed.

The necessity for this reformation originated in Sosigenes, who assigned precisely 365 days six hours, for the sun's passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac; instead of 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes, and 48 seconds, as ascertained by the more perfect observations of modern astronomers. The error of Sosigenes, of about eleven minutes in the length of the solar year, amounts to a whole day in 134 years, insomuch that from the council of Nice, in A. D. 325, to the time of Gregory XIII., ten days too many had crept into the Calendar, the vernal equinox which, in 325, was fixed on the 21st of March, happening, in 1582, on the 11th, though the Calendar constantly placed it on the 21st.

To remedy this defect, Pope Gregory ordered that ten days should be suppressed in the almanack of 1582, the 5th of October being denominated the 15th, as in these days, fewer festivals occurred than in any other ten consecutive days in the year; and to prevent the recurrence of this error for the future, it was directed, by a public bull, that every three centurial years out of four, after A. D. 1600, (which in the Julian calendar are leap-years,) should be only common years of 365 days each. Thus 1700, 1800, and 1900, are styled common years, 2000 a bissextile, 2100, 2200, and 2300, common years, 2400 a bissextile, &c. &c.

By this last correction of the Calendar, the Gregorian year is so nearly commensurate with the revolution of the earth round the sun, that an error of a day cannot be made in less than 3,600 years. If the intercalations be made according to the calculations of the late M. de la Lande, and other eminent astronomers of the last and present centuries, an error of a day need not be committed in less than a million of years!

The papal bull, by which this alteration is made, is thus intituled." Constitutio Gregorii Papæ XIII. pro approbatione et introductione novi Kalendarii ad usum universæ Ecclesiæ Romanæ ; quá, inter plura cætera præcipit et mandat, ut de mense Octobris hujus anni 1582, decem dies inclusivè a III Nonarum usque ad Pridie Idus eximantur, et dies qui festum S. Francisci IV. Nonas celebrari solitum sequitur, dicatur Idus Octobris, Datum Tusculi, Anno Incarnationis Dom. 1582, sexto Kal. Martii, Pontif. sui anno X."

"The Constitution of Pope Gregory XIII. for the approval and introduction of the New Calendar for the use of the Romish church universally; in which, among many other things, he decrees and commands, that ten days be struck off from the month of October of this present year 1582; namely, from the third of the Nones, (Oct. 5,) to the day before the Ides (Oct. 14,) both inclusive; and that the day which follows the festival of St. Francis, usually celebrated as the Irth of the Nones, should be called the Ides of October. Given at Tusculum, in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord 1582, on the sixth of the Calends of March, (Feb. 24,) and in the tenth year of his Pontificate." See Suppl. au Corps Diplomatique, Tome II., Part 1. pp. 187, 188.

This alteration of the Calendar was not adopted by the British till 1752, in which year, the day after the second of September was called Sept. 14. All the nations of Europe have adopted this mode of reckoning except the Russians, who follow the Julian account, introduced among them by Peter the Great, instead of the Constantinopolitan æra by which their chronology had been previously regulated.

The Commentator should make an apology to his Readers for the introduction of the preceding Tables and Calculations; as having, apparently, but little relation to the subject of the Epistle to the Romans: but the very obvious utility of what is here inserted, will more than plead his excuse.

1

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EPISTLE

TO THE

CORINTHIANS.

IN my Preface to the Epistle to the Romans I have made several extracts from Dr. Paley's Hore Paulinæ, in which, from internal evidence, he demonstrates the authenticity of that Epistle. His observations on the first Epistle to the Corinthians, are distinguished by the same profound learning and depth of thought: and as, in an age in which scepticism has had an unbridled range, it may be of great consequence to a sincere enquirer after truth, to have all his doubts removed relative to the authenticity of the Epistle in question : and as Dr. Paley's observations cast considerable light on several passages in the work; I take the liberty to introduce them, as something should be said on the subject; and I do not pretend to have any thing equal to what is here prepared to my hands. I have scarcely made any other change than to introduce the word section for number.

SECTION I.

§ Before we proceed to compare this Epistle with the history, says Dr. Paley, or with any other Epistle; we will employ one section in stating certain remarks applicable to our argument, which arise from a perusal of the Epistle itself.

By an expression in the first verse of the seventh chapter, "Now, concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me," it appears, that this letter to the Corinthians was written by St. Paul in answer to one which he had received from them; and that the seventh, and some of the following chapters, are taken up in resolving certain doubts, and regulating certain points of order, concerning which the Corinthians had in their letter consulted him. This alone is a circumstance considerably in favour of the authenticity of the Epistle; for it must have been a far-fetched contrivance in a forgery, first to have feigned the receipt of a letter from the church of Corinth, which letter does not appear; and then to have drawn up a fictitious answer to it, relative to a great variety of doubts and enquiries, purely economical and domestic; and which, though likely enough to have occurred to an infant society, in a situation and under an institution so novel as that of a Christian church then was, it must have very much exercised the author's invention, and could have answered no imaginable purpose of forgery, to introduce the mention of it at all. Particulars of the kind we refer to, are such as the following: the rule of duty and prudence relative to entering into marriage, as applicable to virgins, and to widows; the case of husbands married to unconverted wires, of wives having unconverted husbands; that case where the unconverted party chooses to separate, or where he chooses to continue the union; the effect which their conversion produced upon their prior state, of circumcision, of slavery; the eating of things offered to idols, as it was in itself, or as others were affected by it; the joining in idolatrous sacrifices; the decorum to be observed in their religious assemblies, the order of speaking, the silence of women, the covering or uncovering of the head, as it became