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Untitled Article
the Church to pay itself , by the appropriation of certain funds which , to all intents and purposes , are public property . The claim of tithe , as Church property , not under the control and held by the sufferance of the civil authprity , is one of the most monstrous pretensions ever set up . The Cambridge
Professor of Hebrew rests this claim on the donation of Ofta , king 0 ? Mercia , in the year 794 ; and the extension of that grant to the whole of England by Ethelwulph , sixt y years after . These are hopeful title deeds to such an estate . What were they worth in the reign of Henry the eighth ? All independent right in the Church was then conclusively settled . The Professor must come down to the tenure of Parliamentary allowance , or else lay claim
to the lay impropriations , and invade what has been private Sroperty for centuries , under the banners of the Saxon Heptarchy , foreover these grants were made to a priesthood which was recognised by the entire community ; who taught the only religion professed by the nation ; not to the clergy of one sect amongst many , and whose hearers are a minority of the population . They were endowments of a Church which yet exists in the land—the Church of Rome . Her title is bad ; but it is better than that of
the Church of England , for the founders never thought of enriching a Church which should dissent from the papacy . These grants were for specific purposes ; the former to expiate a treacherous and bloody murder , and the latter to free the land from the depredations of the Danes . Ethelwulph effected a sort of insurance , partly temporal and partly spiritual . He made the tenth of the kingdom ' an offering to God and the blessed virgin and all the saints in order to secure to himself and his nobles the
immunity of the remainder of their property from the ravages of invasion during their lives , and the deliverance of their souls , by the chanting of masses , after their deaths . The Church of England pretends to represent the insurance brokers , and pockets the premium . But the office failed of its part of the bargain . The Danes were not prayed off from the coast . The € fifty psalms '
by ' the brethren and sisters at every Church' and the ' two masses by every priest have not been duly sung : and who can tell where the souls of king Ethelwulph and his nobles now are ? Certainly not the Church of England , which abominates masses , and does not believe in purgatory . Why what trash is this , Moses and Melchizedeck failing , to put forward in proof of property . If tithe
be a tax , it may be reduced , repealed , or differently app lied by the Legislature , like any other tax . If tithe be a fund set apart for certain purposes , the Legislature , which has already altered its destination for the supposed better accomp lishment of those purposes , may alter it again ; may form a new ecclesiastical alliance ; or declare that there shall be no ecclesiastical alliance , but that there shall be universal education and national instruction instead * This last is what we ourselves deserve . W « would
Untitled Article
314 . On the Separation of Church and State .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 314, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/2/
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