Church and State in England and Wales, 1829-1906
by Michael John Fitzgerald McCarthy (9780217339278)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II Jewish and Roman tithe?Tithes at the Reformation?England still under Papal law?Tithes of fishing and of labour?An anti-Christian system?Tithe commutation explained?Extraordinary tithes? Value of tithe rent-charge?Decadence of agriculture explained? Fiscal reform and tithe?London tithes?Glebe lands?Church rates. The management of the business side of the Church differs little in essentials from that of any commercial concern, yet it works in complete unison with the sacerdotal side. The sacerdotalists, whose theory and practice are most superstitious and medieval, usually become dignitaries, and thus acquire positions of power at the business side of the Church. Hence arises that curious combination of childish, sacerdotal proclivities with commercial acuteness, which is the main characteristic of the Anglican hierarchy and priesthood, and which, on a grander scale, was always characteristic of the Roman hierarchy in the days of its supremacy. At the present day the keenest Anglican champions of the supernatural efficacy of priestly rites, borrowed from paganism or from degenerate medieval Christianity, will be found going into the Church as the profession which was once the most lucrative in the world, and which still offers to the ambitious youth prizes of extraordinary value in money, leisure, and social position. When one considers the unsubstantial title for the levying of tithes, which are its chief property, it must be admitted that the efficiency with which the business side of the Church has been managed, during the seventy-six years since Catholic Emancipation, couldAUTHORITY FOR TITHES 41 hardly be excelled. The earliest biblical authority for tithe rests upon that remarkable passage in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, so strangely detached from ...

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