CHAPTER I

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_BEFORE THE CHRISTIAN ERA._

The first instance on record of the payment of tithes is found in Genesis xiv. 20, when Abraham, after having rescued Lot, was returning a victor from the battle with the spoils of war. King Melchizedek met him on the way, and Abraham gave him, in his office of priest of God, “tithes of all.” It is a disputed point whether Abraham meant a tithe of all his property or of all spoils of war which he had with him.

The next instance we find is the vision of Jacob’s ladder. He vowed to God “Of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee” (Gen. xxviii. 22). It is laid down in the Mosaic law, “And thou shalt surely tithe all the _increase_ of thy seed, that the field brought forth year by year” (Deut. xiv. 22). It is important to note the word “increase” in this passage, which in our law courts had often decided disputed cases, whether certain things were tithable or not. For instance, Were all herbs tithable? Only those which man eats. In Leviticus xxvii. 30-32, “All the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s: and the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord.” It was the custom for a person to be at the sheep-cot with a coloured rod, and as the sheep came out one by one, every tenth was marked with this rod; and that is what is meant by “passing under the rod.”

The priests at Jerusalem received the first fruits and heave offerings, but not the tithes. The heave offerings were the one-sixtieth of the gross produce. But the tithes were devoted to the whole tribe of Levi at Jerusalem, and they gave the tithe of their tithes to the priests—that is, one-hundredth part. It was from this custom, and in order to support the Crusades, that the popes of Rome exacted, early in the fourteenth century, the first fruits and the tithe of the tithes from the hierarchy and beneficed clergy, who were under their spiritual jurisdiction. And when King Henry the Eighth displaced the pope and assumed the supreme authority in the Church, he also exacted the first fruits and tenths. Queen Anne, by an Act passed in 1704, gave the first fruits and tenths back to the Church for the special purpose of augmenting poor livings.

After the destruction of the second temple and the dispersion of the Jews, the payment of tithes among the Jews ceased, because they thought that Jerusalem alone was the place where tithes ought to be paid, and also because it became impossible to trace out the tribe and priesthood to whom alone they were to be paid. It is a question whether the Jews who were converted to Christianity before the destruction of the second temple had paid tithes to the Levites.

The heathen nations seem to have copied and adopted the Jewish custom of paying tithes. We read of the Greeks having paid tithes of the spoils of war to Apollo, and of the Romans to Hercules. But, properly speaking, they were not the sort of tithes mentioned in the Mosaic Law. They were only arbitrary vows and offerings; but no conclusion can be drawn that they were tithes because tenths were given. Sometimes the heathen offered more and sometimes less than one-tenth.

Some ardent supporters of the payment of tithes make themselves ridiculous in tracing their origin to Adam. They state that Adam paid tithes. Here is their story as stated by Selden: “God charged Adam when there was but one man in the world that he should give Him the tenth part of everything, and to teach his children to do the same; but as there was no man to receive it for Holy Church, God commanded that the tenth part of everything should be burned. In the offerings of Cain and Abel, Abel tithed truly of the best, but Cain tithed falsely of the worst. Cain killed Abel because he said he tithed evil. So people must see that false tithing was the cause of the first murder, and it was the cause that God cursed the earth.”[3]

It is very wrong that Scriptural passages, such as that given above, should be distorted in order to induce people to pay tithes to “Holy Church.”

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