9. But there are two things to be observed in the solemnity of the passover, the fourteenth moon, and the first month, which is called _the month of the new fruits_[132]. Therefore that we may not appear to be departing from the Old Testament, let us recite the words of the section concerning the day of celebrating the Passover. Moses warns the people, saying that they must keep the month of the new fruits, proclaiming that it is the first month, for he says, _This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you_, and _thou shalt offer the Passover of the Lord thy God on the fourteenth day of the first month_. Sidenote: S. John i. 17. Sidenote: S. Matt. v. 17. 10. _The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ._ He therefore, Who spake the law, afterwards coming by the Virgin in the last times, accomplished the fulness of the Law, for He came _not to destroy the Law but to fulfil it_, and He celebrated the Passover in the week in which the fourteenth moon was the fifth day of the week, and then on that very day, as what is said before teaches us, He ate the Passover with his disciples: but on the following day, on the sixth day of the week, He was crucified on the fifteenth moon. But the sixteenth moon was the _Sabbath which was an high day_, and so on the seventeenth moon He rose again from the dead. Sidenote: Ps. cxviii. 24. 11. We must then keep this law of Easter, not to keep the fourteenth day as the day of the Resurrection, but rather as the day of the Passion, or at least one of the next preceding days, because the feast of the Resurrection is kept on the Lord’s day; and on the Lord’s day we cannot fast; for we rightly condemn the Manichæans for their fast upon this day. For it is unbelief in Christ’s Resurrection, to appoint a rule of fasting for the day of the Resurrection, since the Law says that the Passion is to be eaten with bitterness[133], that is, with grief, because the Author of Salvation was slain by so great a sacrilege on the part of men; but on the Lord’s day the Prophet teaches us that we should rejoice, saying, _This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it_.