"And the whole church of England in short time will be swallowed up with destruction and confusion !"

In the midst of this general confusion of truth and error, the sects of the independents and baptists advocated boldly sound and scriptural views of the office and duties of the magistrate. As early as 1644, the latter sect " petitioned parliament to stop all proceedings against them, and for the future to provide, that as well particular and private congregations as publike, should have publike protection; that all statutes against separatists should be reviewed and repealed; that the presse should be free for any man that wrote nothing scandalous, or dangerous to the state; that the parliament should prove themselves loving fathers to all sorts of good men, bearing respect unto all, and so inviting an equall assistance and affection from all." Besides these "damnable doctrines," as Dr. Featley calls them, they held others equally "tending to carnall liberty, familism, and a medley and hodge-podge of all religions." They taught," that it is the will and command of God, that since the comming of his sonne, the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships should be granted to all men, in all nations and countryes; that civill states, with their officers of justice, are not governours or defenders of the spirituall and Christian state and worship; that the doctrines of persecution in case of conscience (maintained by Master Calvin, Beza, Cotton, and the ministers of the New English churches) is guilty of all the blood of the soules crying for vengeance under the altar." See The Dipper Dipt; or, the Anabaptists Duck'd and Plung'd over Head and Eares at a Disputation in Southwark, by Daniel Featley, D.D. Lond. 1645. Epistle Dedicatory.

In the profession of faith published by the baptists in 1644, the thirty-eighth article expressly states it as their belief," that the due maintenance of the officers aforesaid (pastors) should be the free and voluntary communication of the church, and ought not, by constraint, to be compelled from the people by a forced law."

L

It will be found, from an examination of the works of this period, that very much that has been written on the so-called fanatics of the commonwealth, and on the character of the Munster baptists, is altogether unfounded. They merely denied" the heretics," as Dr. F. calls them-" the right of the legislature to propound and enact laws in matters of religion, and of either house, or any other, to inflict civill punishment for the violation of them." "Their vindication of the royall commission of King Jesus" has been too often misrepresented. They did not deny the authority of the civil ruler, but only his authority in matters of faith. The independents, as will be seen from the preceding extracts, held doctrines as unwelcome to the established church. "We," says the independent General Ireton, as quoted by Mr. Gladstone, “only contend to preserve our natural right in religion, without imposing our opinions upon other men; whereas, our opponents would not be contented unless they might have power to compel all others to submit to their imposition on pain of death.”

Note B, p. 23.

This fact is very

That tithes are substantially a tax is obvious. fully stated in the following passage from Dr. Smith:

"The revenue of every established church, such parts of it excepted as may arise from particular lands or manors, is a branch, it ought to be observed, of the general revenue of the state, which is thus diverted to a purpose very different from the defence of the state. The tythe, for example, is a real land tax, which puts it out of the power of the proprietors of land to contribute so largely towards the defence of the state as they otherwise might be able to do. The rent of land, however, is, according to some, the sole fund, and, according to others, the principal fund, from which, in all great monarchies, the exigencies of the state must be ultimately supplied. The more of this fund that is given to the church, the less, it is evident, can be spared to the state. It may be laid down as a certain maxim that, all other things being supposed equal, the richer the church, the poorer must necessarily be either the sove

reign on the one hand, or the people on the other; and, in all cases, the less able must the state be to defend itself. In several protestant countries, particularly in all the protestant cantons of Switzerland, the revenue which anciently belonged to the Roman-catholic church, the tythes and church lands, has been found a fund sufficient, not only to afford competent salaries to the established clergy, but to defray, with little or no addition, all the other expenses of the state. The magistrates of the powerful canton of Berne, in particular, have accumulated out of the savings from this fund a very large sum, supposed to amount to several millions, part of which is deposited in a public treasure, and part is placed at interest in what are called the public funds of the different indebted nations of Europe, chiefly in those of France and Great Britain."- Wealth of Nations, book v. chap. 1.

The influence of small revenues is thus stated by the same writer:

"Where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can be very great; and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may no doubt be carried too far, has, however, some very agreeable effects. Nothing but exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune. The vices of levity and vanity necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides, almost as ruinous to him as they are to the common people. In his own conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals which the common people respect the most. He gains their esteem and affection by that plan of life which his own interest and situation would lead him to follow. The common people look up to him with that kindness with which we naturally regard one who approaches somewhat to our own condition, but who, we think, ought to be in a higher. Their kindness naturally provokes his kindness. He becomes careful to instruct them, and attentive to assist and relieve them. He does not even despise the prejudices of people who are disposed to be so favourable to him, and never treats them with those contemptuous and arrogant airs which we so often meet with in the proud dignitaries of opulent and well-endowed churches. The

presbyterian clergy, accordingly, have more influence over the minds of the common people than perhaps the clergy of any other established church."- Ibid.

Note C, p. 50.

The practice of the early Christians in supporting their pastors is thus described by our own Milton :

:

"The primitive church thought it no shame to receive all their maintenance as the alms of their auditors; which they who defend tithes as if it made for their cause, whereas it utterly confutes them -omit not to set down at large, proving to our hands, out of Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, and others, that the clergy lived at first upon the mere benevolence of their hearers, who gave what they gave, not to the clergy, but to the church, out of which the clergy had their portions given them in baskets, and were thence called sportularii,—basketclerks; that their portion was a very mean allowance, only for a bare livelihood, according to those precepts of our Saviour, Matt. x. 7, &c.; the rest was distributed to the poor. They cite also, out of Prosper, the disciple of St. Austin, that such of the clergy as had means of their own might not without sin partake of church maintenance, not receiving thereby food which they abound with, but feeding on the sins of other men; that the Holy Ghost saith of such clergymen, they eat the sins of my people; and that a council at Antioch in the year 340 suffered not either priest or bishop to live on church maintenance without necessity. Thus far tithers themselves have contributed to their own confutation, by confessing that the church lived primitively on alms."-The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church. Works, Symmons' ed., p. 381. The same fact is stated in the fifth book of Bingham's Origines Ecclesiastica, on this question an unexceptionable authority.

Of the sufficiency of these voluntary offerings for the support of the clergy the following passage is conclusive :- "If any one is desirous to know what part of the church revenues was anciently most serviceable and beneficial to the church, he may be informed from St. Chrysostom and St. Austin, who gave the greatest com

;

mendation to the offerings and oblations of the people, and seem to say that the church was never better provided than when her maintenance was raised chiefly from them, for then men's zeal prompted them to be very liberal in their daily offerings; but as lands were settled on the church their zeal sensibly abated, and so the church came to be worse provided for under the notion of growing richer which is the thing which St. Chrysostom complains of in his own times, when the ancient revenues arising from oblations were in a great measure sunk, and the church, with all her lands, left in a worse condition than she was before; for now her ministers were forced to submit to secular cares, to the management of land and houses, and the business of buying and selling, for fear the orphans, and virgins, and widows of the church should starve. He exhorts the people, therefore, to return to their ancient liberality of oblations, which would at once ease the ministry of all such cares, and make a good provision for the poor, and take off all the little scoffs and objections that some were so ready to make and cast upon the clergy, that they were too much given to secular cares and employments, when, indeed, it was not choice, but necessity, that forced them to it. There are," says he, " in this place, (Antioch,) by the grace of God, a hundred thousand persons that come to church. Now, if every one of these would but give one loaf of bread daily to the poor, the poor would live in plenty; if every one would contribute but one halfpenny no man would want; neither should we undergo so many reproaches and derisions, as if we were too intent upon our possessions." By this discourse of Chrysostom's it plainly appears that he thought the oblations of the people in populous cities, when men acted with their primitive zeal, was a better provision for the clergy than even the lands and possessions of the church. And St. Austin seems to have had the same sense of this matter; for Possidius tells us, in his Life, that when he found the possessions of the church were become a little invidious, he was used to tell the laity," that he had rather live upon the oblations of the people of God than undergo the care and trouble of those possessions; and that he was ready to part with them, provided all the servants and ministers