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.”
CHAPTER II.
FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE COUNCIL OF MASÇON.
In Apostolical times the Christian ministers were supported by voluntary contributions out of a common fund, and this practice prevailed for four hundred years.[4] Those who preached the Gospel lived by the Gospel, but this Scriptural statement did not mean, as some assert, that they were to live on the payment of tithes, otherwise it would have been stated. St. Paul ordered weekly collections to be made for the saints in the Churches of Galatia and Corinth (1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2). The voluntary contributions of the faithful were collected and put into a common treasure (Acts ii. 44; iv. 34). The liberality of the Christians then far exceeded anything which could have been collected from tithes. And even if tithes had been exacted, it is exceedingly doubtful whether the progress of Christianity would not have been materially checked at its outset.
The Jewish Law, as regards the payment of tithes, was not binding on Christians, no more than the custom of bigamy and polygamy adopted by the Israelites is binding on the Christian Church. There is no injunction in the New Testament binding Christians to pay tithes to their ministers. And when the payment was first urged in the Christian Church, it was supported by references to the Mosaic Law and not to St. Paul’s words, viz., “That those who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.” There was a growing habit of looking upon the clergy as the successors and representatives of the Levites under the Old Law, and this habit had given an impulse to that claim which they set up to the payment of tithes by the laity.[5]
The Apostolical Constitutions for the Christian Church, collected, as it is alleged, by Pope Clement I., the successor as is said of St. Peter, first bishop of Rome, were fabricated more than eight centuries after apostolical times. Cardinal Bellarmine is honest enough to ignore them. But they imposed on the credulous and were accepted without criticism as genuine, even by canonists, in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Selden thinks they were concocted about A.D. 1000; others think in 1042. In these Constitutions tithes are stated to have been paid by the Christians to the Apostles. Sir H. Spelman (p. 108) thinks the first thirty-five canons are very ancient. “Dionysius Exiguus,” he says, “who lived within 400 years after the Apostles, translated them out of Greek.”
The fifth canon ordained that first fruits and tithes should be sent to the house of the bishops and priests, and not to be offered upon the altar. The Greek word in the copy is not δεκασμούς. No solid argument for the payment of tithes can be founded on this canon, for if we take the custom of the Anglo-Saxon Churches at the end of the sixth century, which was in accordance with that in primitive times, we find no account for the payment of tithes. “There is no mention of tithes,” says Lord Selborne, “in any part of the ancient canon law of the Roman Church, collected towards the end of the fifth century by Dionysius (called Exiguus or the Little), a Scythian monk who collected 401 Oriental and African canons.”[6]