that right at preſent ſubſiſts. 3. Who may be diſcharged, either totally or in part, from paying them.
1. As to their original. I will not put the title of the clergy to tithes upon any divine right ; though ſuch a right certainly commenced, and I believe as certainly ceaſed, with the Jewiſh theocracy. Yet an honourable and competent maintenance for the miniſters of the goſpel is, undoubtedly, jure divino; whatever the particular mode of that maintenance may be. For, beſides the poſitive precepts of the new teſtament, natural reaſon will tell us, that an order of men, who are ſeparated from the world, and excluded from other lucrative profeſſions, for the ſake of the reſt of mankind, have a right to be furniſhed with the neceſſaries, conveniences, and moderate enjoyments of life, at their expenſe, for whoſe benefit they forego the uſual means of providing them. Accordingly all municipal laws have provided a liberal and decent maintenance for their national prieſts or clergy: ours in particular have eſtabliſhed this of tithes, probably in imitation of the Jewiſh law: and perhaps, conſidering the degenerate ſtate of the world in general, it may be more beneficial to the Engliſh clergy to found their title on the law of the land, than upon any divine right whatſoever, unacknowleged and unſupported by temporal ſanctions.
We cannot preciſely aſcertain the time when tithes were firſt introduced into this country. Poſſibly they were cotemporary with the planting of chriſtianity among the Saxons, by Auguſtin the monk, about the end of the ſixth century. But the firſt mention of them, which I have met with in any written Engliſh law, is in a conſtitutional decree, made in a ſynod held A. D. 786[1], wherein the payment of tithes in general is ſtrongly enjoined. This canon, or decree, which at firſt bound not the laity, was effectually confirmed by two kingdoms of the heptarchy, in their parliamentary conventions of eſtates, reſpective-
- ↑ Selden, c. 8. §. 2.
