of the new moon." Here again no
festal celebration of the day is attested.

There were, however, many speculations in the 2nd century about the date
of Christ's birth. Clement of Alexandria, towards its close, mentions
several such, and condemns them as superstitions. Some chronologists, he
says, alleged the birth to have occurred in the twenty-eighth year of
Augustus, on the 25th of Pachon, the Egyptian month, i.e. the 20th of
May. These were probably the Basilidian gnostics. Others set it on the
24th or 25th of Pharmuthi, i.e. the 19th or 20th of April. Clement
himself sets it on the 17th of November, 3 B.C. The author of a Latin
tract, called the _De Pascha computus_, written in Africa in 243, sets
it by private revelation, _ab ipso deo inspirati_, on the 28th of March.
He argues that the world was created perfect, flowers in bloom, and
trees in leaf, therefore in spring; also at the equinox, and when the
moon just created was full. Now the moon and sun were created on a
Wednesday. The 28th of March suits all these considerations. Christ,
therefore, being the Sun of Righteousness, was born on the 28th of
March. The same symbolical reasoning led Polycarp[2] (before 160) to set
his birth on Sunday, when the world's creation began, but his baptism on
Wednesday, for it was the analogue of the sun's creation. On such
grounds certain Latins as early as 354 may have transferred the human
birthday from the 6th of January to the 25th of December, which was then
a Mithraic feast and is by the chronographer above referred to, but in
another part of his compilation, termed _Natalis invicti solis_, or
birthday of the unconquered Sun. Cyprian (_de orat. dom. 35_) calls
Christ _Sol verus_, Ambrose _Sol novus noster_ (Sermo vii. 13), and such
rhetoric was widespread. The Syrians and Armenians, who clung to the 6th
of January, accused the Romans of sun-worship and idolatry, contending
with great probability that the feast of the 25th of December had been
invented by disciples of Cerinthus and its lections by Artemon to
commemorate the _natural_ birth of Jesus. Chrysostom also testifies the
25th of December to have been from the beginning known in the West, from
Thrace even as far as Gades. Ambrose, _On Virgins_, in. ch. 1, writing
to his sister, implies that as late as the papacy of Liberius 352-356,
the Birth from the Virgin was feasted together with the Marriage of Cana
and the Banquet of the 4000 (Luke ix. 13), which were never fea