Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/37

 Ch. 3. that right at preent ubits. 3. Who may be dicharged, either totally or in part, from paying them.

1. to their original. I will not put the title of the clergy to tithes upon any divine right ; though uch a right certainly commenced, and I believe as certainly ceaed, with the Jewih theocracy. Yet an honourable and competent maintenance for the miniters of the gopel is, undoubtedly, jure divino; whatever the particular mode of that maintenance may be. For, beides the poitive precepts of the new tetament, natural reaon will tell us, that an order of men, who are eparated from the world, and excluded from other lucrative profeions, for the ake of the ret of mankind, have a right to be furnihed with the necearies, conveniences, and moderate enjoyments of life, at their expene, for whoe benefit they forego the uual means of providing them. Accordingly all municipal laws have provided a liberal and decent maintenance for their national priets or clergy: ours in particular have etablihed this of tithes, probably in imitation of the Jewih law: and perhaps, conidering the degenerate tate of the world in general, it may be more beneficial to the Englih clergy to found their title on the law of the land, than upon any divine right whatoever, unacknowleged and unupported by temporal anctions.

cannot preciely acertain the time when tithes were firt introduced into this country. Poibly they were cotemporary with the planting of chritianity among the Saxons, by Augutin the monk, about the end of the ixth century. But the firt mention of them, which I have met with in any written Englih law, is in a contitutional decree, made in a ynod held A. D. 786, wherein the payment of tithes in general is trongly enjoined. This canon, or decree, which at firt bound not the laity, was effectually confirmed by two kingdoms of the heptarchy, in their parliamentary conventions of etates, repective- Rh