84 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

c h a r. of a priest could not be omitted without the utmost:

I. impiety, was a point undisputed : But the Romansand Saxons called their antagonists schismatics;because they celebrated Easter on the very day ofthe full moon in March, if that day fell on aSunday, instead of waiting till the Sunday follow-ing ; and because they staved the foreheadfrom ear to ear, instead of making that tonsureon the crown of the head, and in a circularform. In order to render their antagonists odious,they affirmed, that, once in seven years, theyconcurred with the Jews in the time of celebrat-ing that festival : And that they might recom-mend their own form of tonsure, they maintain-ed, that it imitated symbolically the crown ofthorns worn by Christ in his passion; whereasthe other form was invented by Simon Magus,without any regard to that representationThese controversies had, from the beginning,excited such animosity between the British andRomish priests , that, instead of concurring intheir endeavours to convert the idolatrous Saxons,they refused all communion together, and eachregarded his opponent as no better than a PaganThe dispute lasted more than a century; and wasat last finished , not by men’s discovering the follyof it, which would have been too great an effortfor human reason to accomplish, but by the entire

I4S Bede, lib. 2. cap. 19.

1,4 Ibid. lib. 5. cap. 21. Eddius, § 24.

Bede, lib. 2. cap. 2. 4., 20. Eddius, § 12.