Gents Mag 1831 part 1 p.5

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	Gentleman's Magazine 1831 part 1 p.5 price of the produce of land, he has these interrogatories. "Why, we ask, is all to depend on the will of any Archbishop or Bishop? Why is the cumbrous and costly machinery to be renewed at intervals? Why these partial provisions in favour of the receiver of Tithes, and none in favour of the payer?" He thus intimates that there is partiality where none exists, and endeavours to induce the farmers to consider any thing short of an eternal lease on their own terms, without consent of the guardians of the property, an intolerable hardship. This may suffice to justify my expressions. I now proceed to an impartial epitome of the history of Tithes, &c. The priests under the Mosaic dispensation were supported by Tithes and offerings. It was evidently the will of the Divine Founder of the Christian Religion, that the ministers of the Gospel should be supported by the laity, which appears from his charge to the 70 missionaries. "Carry neither purses nor scrip, nor shoes, &c. for the labourer is worthy of his hire." From many passages in the New Testament we have strong grounds for concluding, that He designed that Christian ministers should be maintained as the priests had been under the former dispensation, i.e. by Tithes and Offerings; for instance, "If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things? Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things, live of the things of the Temple? and that they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar? Even so (Ούτω) hath the Lord ordained, that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel." Hence we find the early Fathers exhorting their hearers to contribute Tithes for the support of the Clergy. So early as A.D. 356, it was decreed at a Council, that Tithes were due to ministers of the Gospel as the rents of God (Dei census). Again, it was decreed at the Consilium Romanum, A.D. 375, "That Tithes and First fruits should be given by the faithful, and that they who refuse should be stricken with the curse." (Ut decimae atque primitiae a fidelibus darentur; qui detrectant anathemate feriantur.) After the Christian Religion had been embraced by the majority of the English people, the Barons and nobles, in obedience to the injunctions of Augustin and his successors, gave tithes and glebe lands for the endowment of Churches, &c. as certain charters now extant, and the claim made by King John of the right of his nobles to found Churches with their seignories, by the custom of the realm, plainly evince. Such Tithes were regularly paid according to ancient usage and decrees of the Church, previously to any regular statutes, which is evident from a canon of Egbert, Archbishop of York, A.D. 750, and from the 17th canon of the General Council held for the whole kingdom at Chalcuth, A.D. 787. About A.D. 793, Offa, King of Mercia, passed a law to secure the Tithes of his kingdom to the Church (Offa Rex Merciorum nominatissimus, Decimam omnium rerum Ecclesiae concedit), and ordered his subjects to pay them regularly under sever penalties. Again, about A.D. 855, Ethelwolf, immediately after the union of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, secured by a regular statute the Tithes of the whole land to the Church, to be held by them in their own right for ever (jure pepetuo possidendam). From this time to the Conquest many statutes were enacted for enforcing the payment of Tithes, &c. and when William the Conqueror framed a code of laws for the government of his English subjects, the Tithes were secured to the Clergy, according to laws already enacted, and he solemnly swore to observe the laws and customs granted to the people by the Kings of England, his lawful and religious predecessors, and particularly the laws, customs, and franchises, granted to the Clergy by the glorious St. Edward his predecessor. The original guardians of this property were the King, with his council of Bishops and chiefs of the realm (Rex cum consilio Episcorum ac principum): but in process of time, during the four centuries subsequent to the Conquest, the Pope gradually usurped the sole authority over ecclesiastical affairs, as is evident by resolutions entered into by King Edward the First and his Barons at a Parliament held at Carlisle; when the King, by the assent of his Barons, denied the Pope's usurped authority over the revenues of the Church "within England," alleging, that
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