to correct abuses resulting from their control of the revenues of the church.

In the fourth century the church and the clergy came into the possession of property, personal and real. As early as the year 321, Constantine granted the right of receiving the donations and bequests of pious persons.12 This right was often renewed and defined, to prevent unjust exaction and other abuses. According to Eusebius, he granted at one time more than seventy thousand dol lars from his treasury for the support of the ministry in Africa; which is only one instance among many of his liberal donations.13 The laws of Julian, confiscating this property, were themselves either quickly abrogated or but partially enforced, without producing any lasting effect.11

The liberality of Gratian, Theodosius the Great, Theodosius the Younger, and other emperors, we must pass in silence; but there were certain ordinances for enriching the revenue of the church which are worthy of notice.

1. On the demolition of heathen temples and the dispersion of their priests by Theodosius and his sons, some of the spoils were - secularized to enrich the treasury of the state; but the greater part were applied to the benefit of the clergy, or appropriated to religious uses.15

2. On the same principle the property belonging to heretics was sequestrated to the true Catholic church.16

3. The estates of the clergy who died intestate and without heirs, and of all those who left the ministry for unworthy reasons, became the property of the church.1

4. The church was the heir at law of all martyrs and confessors who died without near relations.18

The church, A. D. 321, as stated above, was authorized by state law to receive bequests from any who might be disposed to make legacies to it. This was a powerful incentive to the clergy to secure the inheritance of widows and orphans, and all who could, by any means, be induced to bestow their property upon the church, so that, according to Planck, it become customary "within ten years, for every one at his death to leave a legacy to the church; and within fifty years a tenth part of the entire wealth of the country passed into the hands of the clergy."

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5. The revenue of the church was increased by tithes and first fruits. The primitive church might be expected to have introduced this ordinance of the Jews from the beginning. But it was wholly

unknown until the fourth and fifth century. Irenæus, indeed, speaks of first fruits at an earlier period,20 but it is a disputed passage, and only relates to the wine and the bread of the eucharist as the first fruits of Christ. Basil, A. D. 370, appears to have been the first to urge the payment of tithes. Chrysostom,23 Gregory Nazianzen," Hilary," Augustin,26 and others, all enjoin the paying of tithes as a duty, and not in imitation of the Jews. These tithes and first fruits the Christians gave as a free-will offering, and not by constraint of law, of which there appears no indication in the first five centuries. The Council of Maçon, in the year 585, ordered the payment of tithes in the church, as the restoration of an ancient and venerable custom. They directed the clergy to urge the duty in their public addresses, and threatened with excision from the church all who should refuse compliance." This, it will be observed, is merely an ecclesiastical law. No mention is made of any enactment of the state.

Charlemagne first required the payment of tithes by statute law, and enforced the duty by severe penalties.28 That emperor himself paid tithes from his private property and his Saxon possessions. His successors confirmed and completed the system of tithes by law, which was subsequently introduced into England and Sweden.29

In the Eastern church the support of religion was never legally enforced, but it was urged as a religious duty, and tithes were paid as a voluntary offering.30 In the Western, under the general name of offerings, the ancient system of contributions and almsgivings was perpetuated in connection with the tithes and first fruits. These offerings were made, in some instances, in money; in others, in provisions and in live stock, in cattle, swine, lambs, geese, fowls, etc. The avails of these were applied to the treasury of the church, or presented particularly to the parson, vicar, chorister, or warden. Similar offerings are still common in the Protestant churches.

The payment of a stipulated salary to the clergy, in money, parsonages, tithes, interest, and other rents, and the distribution of regular salaries and occasional perquisites, is an institution of the Middle Ages, and too extensive and complicated to be discussed in this place.

§6. OF THE INDEPENDENCE AND THE DEGENERACY OF THE BISHOPS.

FEW regulations of the church were more injurious to the peace and purity of the church than those which have been detailed above;

none, perhaps, intrusted the bishops with more dangerous and disastrous rights. The bishop was made the sole, the absolute, and irresponsible retainer and disburser of the funds of the church. "We command that the bishop have power over the goods of the church; for if he be intrusted with the precious souls, much more ought he to give directions about goods." Such is the unlimited. power which the Apostolical Canons, c. 41, give to the bishop over the revenues of the church. The deacons were forbidden even to give any thing in charity without the special permission of the bishop, because, if they give "to a person in distress without the bishop's knowledge, they will give it so that it must tend to the reproach of the bishop, and will accuse him as careless of the distressed." This prerogative of the bishop is guarded with peculiar jealousy, and affirmed by repeated decrees of councils.

This placed the subordinate orders of the clergy in humiliating dependence upon the bishop for their daily bread, and made them of necessity his sycophants and subservient agents. Cyprian seems to have been the first to claim for the bishops this right over the property of the church; and the resistance of this unjust authority was one principal cause of the rupture between him and Felicissimus, the latter objecting to this independent control of the public treasury.

It is, indeed, the effectual overthrow of the first principles of civil and religious liberty, and the grand expedient of all despotisms, spiritual and secular, to take away from the people the control of their own public funds, and submit them to the arbitrary control of irresponsible agents.

As illustrative of the natural abuse of this power, Schöne mentions a bishop, who, for four years in succession, retained all the income of the diocese, without any distribution to the clergy or to the poor.2

Another result was the enormous increase of the wealth of the clergy, as already indicated. "Behold, our treasury is exhausted," says the king of France, in the last half of the sixth century. "Our wealth has passed over into the churches. No one prospers but the bishops; our dignity is lost, having been transferred to the bishops."3 As a natural consequence, the ministry was soon crowded with unworthy and corrupt men, an evil which the civil authorities vainly sought by various expedients to correct.

Make the ministry the passport to honour and to wealth, and corrupt men, from such sordid motives, will pass into it. The de

generacy of the ministry was but the legitimate fruit of the foregoing regulations, notwithstanding the precautions used by the ordinances of the church to guard it against the intrusion of unworthy men.

It was an established principle, under the Christian emperors, that temporal authority was subordinate to the spiritual; that all ecclesiastical causes should not be tried in civil, but only in an ecclesiastical court;* and that from this decision of the bishop there should be no appeal to any civil court of justice; so that a bishop for any offence could only be tried by bishops or synods. In addition to all this, the oecumenical council at Constantinople, A. D. 381, c. 6, hedged about an action against a bishop with so many conditions as to make it extremely difficult to bring a charge against a bishop for any offence whatever. These conditions gave the bishop almost an immunity from censure in any case, insomuch that Jerome, with great justice complains-"It is no easy matter to bring a charge against a bishop, for even if he is guilty, the charge will not be believed; neither if convicted, will he be punished.'

Herein lies an explanation of the rapid and sad declension of Christianity that succeeded the age of Constantine. Priestly dignity and power had usurped the authority of the church: it had raised the government above the church of Christ, invested with Divine authority, as a vast oppressive machinery, to govern them without their control or direction. The priesthood had absorbed a large portion of the wealth of the people, and the corruption and degradation into which priest and people mutually sank for more than a thousand years, was but the natural consequence of this spiritual despotism.

* Quoties de religione agitur episcopos convenit judicare.—Codex Theodos. lib. i. tit. xi. 1; Comp. lib. xvi. tit. ii. 23.

CHAPTER XIII.

OF CHURCHES AND SACRED PLACES.

§ 1. OF THE HISTORY OF CHURCHES.

CHRISTIANS in different ages have called the places where they were wont to meet together for religious worship by a great variety of names. The primitive appellation was, according to some, έxx2noia, 1 Cor. xi. 18, 20, 22. So it was used by Ignatius, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, etc. To this may be added the names οἱ οἶκος Θεοῦ, οἶκος ἐκκλησίας, dominicum, domus Dei, etc., κυριακόν, προσευχτήριον, ναός, templum, etc., the Lord's house, house of the church, house of prayer, temple, etc. These names became familiar in the third and fourth centuries.

The German kirche, from which is derived the Scotch kirk, and English church, came into use in the eighth century. The original of the word is xvpiaxóv, xvpiaxn, the Lord's house. Churches have also been entitled uaptipia, in honour of the holy martyrs, and for the same reason particular churches have been called by the names of different saints and martyrs, St. Paul's, St. Peter's, etc. The following names have also, at different times, and for various reasons, been given to a Christian church:-Tituli, (TíT201,) ανάκτορον, τρόπαια, σκηνή, concilia, conciliabula, conventicula, casa, σύνοδοι, μοναστήριον, κοιμητήριον, columba, corpus Christi, ναός, νῆσος, ἀποστολεῖον, προφητεῖον, and many others.

Christians, in the times of the apostles, first resorted to the temple and to the synagogues of the Jews, Acts ii. 46; v. 12; xiii. 14; xiv. 1; then, to private houses for social worship. Acts xix. 8-10; xx. 8 et seq.; Rom. xvi. 3-5; Col. iv. 15. Of these places of assembly they had several in the same city. In times of persecution, at a later period, they were compelled to unite in the worship of God wherever they could meet without molestation—in private houses, in the open fields, in desert and solitary places, in caves and dens of the earth. In view of these circumstances, many have