TITHES. A certain portion, or allotment, for the maintenance of the priesthood, being the tenth part of the produce of land, cattle, or other branches of wealth. It is an income, or revenue, common both to the Jewish and Christian priesthood. (Gen. xiv. 20; Lev. xxvii. 30-33; &c.) The origin of tithes, in the Christian Church, was something of this kind: When a benefactor was not able or not willing to part with an estate out and out, he settled on the Church which he was endowing a certain portion of the income arising out of the estate. The ratio which this portion bore to the whole amount varied enormously, and so one man gave a tithe of corn only, another a tithe of wood, another a tithe of meadow land, another a tithe of stock, another tithes of all these together. There is a very common mistake made that tithes are a kind of tax, levied on the whole country by Act of Parliament. They are nothing of the kind, being simply a certain portion of the income arising out of lands settled by the former owners of those lands for the maintenance of the parson of the parish. They date back to the 4th century.
Although the Church is disestablished in Ireland, tithes are still paid, not to the clergy, but to the Government. Disestablishment, therefore, is small gain to the farmer.
Tithe Redemption Trust. In the year 1846 a very excellent Society was formed, called "The Tithe Redemption Trust," the object of which is the very opposite of that at which the Liberation Society aims. It has been quietly at work for some years, endeavouring, with some success, to get back, either by redemption or by voluntary donation, the tithes which have been alienated by appropriation or impropriation. What portion of Church property has been long enjoyed by private families, or by Corporations, has, of course, become inalienable; but it would be a reasonable and a righteous thing (and all the more blessed for being voluntary) that every person who receives tithes, or possesses glebe land in a parish, for which no spiritual service is rendered, should give in some way or other to the Church a very liberal percentage of what was never meant to be raised for the purpose of private emolument, but for the fitting discharge of ecclesiastical duties. (Webb's "England's Inheritance in her Church.")
TITLE, see Orders, Qualifications for.
TRACTARIANISM. The Anglican movement which began with the publication of the celebrated "Tracts for the Times" in 1833. The principal results of this movement are (1) the complete reintegration of the original theory of the Church of England; of that "ancient religion which, in 1830, had well-nigh faded out of the land;" (2) the improvement which has taken place in the lives of the clergy, in the performance of the Services, and in the condition of our churches; and the marked revival in the Corporate life of the Church herself.
The great names of this movement are Pusey, Newman, Marriott, Oakley, Manning, Robert Wilberforce, Keble, and Palmer. For some few the movement led to disastrous issues; and they fell at last into Roman errors, and joined that erring Church.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION. The name given to the philosophical theory whereby the Church of Rome has endeavoured to explain and define the doctrine of the Real Presence. In it they allege that the bread and wine in the Eucharist is miraculously converted or changed into the very body and blood of our Lord, by the consecration of the priest. This false doctrine is condemned in Article xxviii.
TRENT, COUNCIL OF. An important Council of the Roman Church which met in 1545, and was dissolved in 1563. The city of Trent is in the Tyrol. It was at this Council that the Creed of the Roman Church was last defined, and all who differed from it were anathematised. Neither the Greek Church nor the English Church was represented there, so it has no claim to the title of oecumenical, or general, as asserted by Romanists.
TRINITY, THE HOLY. The Athanasian Creed and Article i. give the teaching of our Church on the Holy Trinity. There we learn that in the unity of the Godhead there be three Persons; that is, though there be but one living and true God, yet there be three Persons, who are that one living and true God. Though the true God be but one in substance, yet He is three in subsistence, so as still to be but one substance. And these three Persons, every one of which is God, and yet all three but one God, are really related to one another; as they are termed in Scripture, one is the Father, the other the Son, the other the Holy Ghost.
The Father is the first Person in the Deity; not begotten, nor proceeding, but begetting; the Son, the second, not begetting nor proceeding, but begotten; the Holy Ghost, the third, not begotten, nor begetting, but proceeding. The first is called the Father, because He begot the second; the second is called the Son, because He is begotten of the Father; the third is called the Holy Ghost, because breathed both from the Father and the Son.