re solemn feast, and,
strange as it may now appear, was kept at the time by the Christians in
much the same way in which it had been celebrated by the Jews before the
fall of Jerusalem. A lamb was shut up on a certain day; it was
afterwards roasted; and then eaten by the brotherhood. [626:2] The time
when this ceremony was to be observed, and some other circumstantials,
now formed topics of earnest and protracted discussion. One party, known
as the Quarto-decimans, or _Fourteenth Day Men_, held that the Paschal
feast was to be kept exactly at the time when the Jews had been
accustomed to eat the Passover, that is, on the fourteenth day of the
first month of the Jewish year; [626:3] and they celebrated the festival
of the resurrection on the seventeenth day of the month, that is, on the
third day after partaking of the Paschal lamb, whether that happened to
be the first day of the week or otherwise. The other party strenuously
maintained that the eating of the Paschal lamb ought to be postponed
until the night preceding the first Lord's day next following the
fourteenth day of the first month. They considered that this next Lord's
day should be recognized as the festival of our Saviour's resurrection,
and that the whole of the preceding week until the close should be kept
as a fast not to be interrupted by the eating of the Passover.

The most determined Quarto-decimans were to be found in Asia Minor, and
at their head was Polycrates, the chief pastor of Ephesus. At the head
of the other party was Victor, bishop of Rome. The Church over which he
presided did not originally observe any such appointment, [627:1] but
some of its members of Jewish extraction were probably, on that account,
dissatisfied; and about the time of the establishment of the Catholic
system, the matter seems to have been settled by a compromise. It
appears to have been then arranged that the festival should be kept; but
to avoid the imputation of symbolizing with the Jews, it was agreed that
the Friday of the Paschal week and the Lord's day following, or the day
on which our Saviour suffered and the day on which He rose from the
dead, should be the great days of observance. This arrangement was
pretty generally accepted by those connected with what now began to be
called the Catholic Church: but some parties pertinaciously refused to
conform. Victor, as the head of the Catholic confederation, no doubt
deemed it his duty to exact obedience from all its