EARLY ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY.
[To TEE EDITOR OF Tim “ErscTATOM"] SM,—A correspondent in your last number, Mr. Percival -Jackson, takes exception to your statement that "all the Christianity St. Augustine found in England was Latin," and asks whether the question discussed at Whitby (A.D. 664) was not whether the Eastern reckoning with regard to the observance of Easter should be followed. This is a mistake. The dispute at Whitby had nothing whatever to do with that question. It -arose from the fact that the British monks retained the -old method of computing the time for keeping Easter, which had been employed generally in the West of Europe at the period of the introduction of Christianity into Britain, and that they were ignorant of the correction of the lunar -cycle by Victor of Acquitaine. This correction had been -adopted by the Council of Orleans in 451, and the corrected method was, of course, followed by St. Augustine and his com- ,panions.
The change in computation was, however, unknown in Britain for a century and a half, owing to the isolation of our island at the time, in consequence of the invasion of the North of Europe by the Teutonic tribes. It is hoped that this explanation will remove the difficulty that Mr. Jackson has felt in accepting your .statement.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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