It started with the Vicar of Helleston, and we may wash our hands of it.
On the first Sunday of January 1800, the Vicar of Helleston (an unimportant town in the extreme southwest of Cornwall, near the Lizard) preached a sermon which, at the request of a few parishioners, he afterwards published under the title of _Reflections on the New Century_.

In delight, no doubt, at finding himself in print, he sent complimentary copies to a number of his fellow-clergy, and, among others, to the Vicar of Troy.
Our Vicar, being a scholar and a gentleman, but a determined foe to loose thinking (especially in Cambridge men), courteously acknowledged the gift, but took occasion to remind his brother of Helleston that Reflection was a retrospective process; that Man, as a finite creature, could but anticipate events before they happened; and that if the parishioners of Helleston wished to reflect on the New Century they would have to wait until January 1901, or something more than a hundred years.
The Vicar of Helleston replied, tacitly admitting his misuse of language, but demanding to know if in the Vicar of Troy's opinion the new century would begin on January 1st, 1801: for his own part he had supposed, and was prepared to maintain, that it had begun on January 1st, 1800.
To this the Vicar of Troy retorted that undoubtedly the new century would begin on the first day of January 1801, and that anyone who held another opinion must suffer from confusion of mind.
The Vicar of Helleston stuck to his contention, and a terrific correspondence ensued.

With the arguments exchanged--which tended more and more to appeal from common sense to metaphysics--we need not concern ourselves.

The most of them reappeared the other day (1900-1901) in the public press, and will doubtless reappear at the alleged beginning of every century to come.

But in his sixth letter the Vicar of Helleston opened what I may call a masked battery.
He said--and I believe the fellow had been leading up to this from the start--that he desired to thresh the question out not only on general grounds, but officially as Vicar of Helleston; since he had reason to believe that a certain day in the opening year of the new century would bring a term to the Millennium; that the Millennium had begun in Helleston close on a thousand years ago; and that (as he calculated, on the 8th of May next approaching) Satan might reasonably be expected to regain his liberty (see Revelation xx.).
For evidence he adduced a local tradition that in his parish the Archangel Michael (whose Mount stands at no great distance) had met and defeated the Prince of Darkness, had cast him into a pit, and had sealed the pit with a great stone; which stone might be seen by any visitor on application to the landlord of the "Angel" Inn and payment of a trifling fee.