It is not necessary, that I should trace this subject farther, or that I should make distinctions relative to tithes, whether they may be rectorial, or vicarial, or whether they may belong to lay persons, I have already developed enough of their history for my purpose.  I shall therefore hasten to state those other reasons, which the Quakers have to give, why they cannot pay other ministers of the Gospel for their spiritual labours, or rather, why they cannot consent to the payment of tithes, as the particular species of payment demanded by the church.

SECT.  III

The other reasons then, as deducible from the history of tithes, are the following—­First, that they are not in equity dues of the church—­Secondly, that the payment of them being compulsory, it would, if acceded to, be an acknowledgment that the civil magistrate has a right to use force in matters of religion—­And thirdly, that being claimed upon an act which holds them forth as of divine right, any payment of them would be an acknowledgment of the Jewish religion, and that Christ had not yet actually come.

The other reasons then, which the Quakers have to give for refusing to support other ministers of the Gospel, may be now deduced from the nature of tithes, as explained in the former section.

The early Quakers rejected the payment of tithes for three reasons; and, first, because they were demanded of them as dues of the church.

Against this doctrine, they set their faces as a religious body.  They contended that, if they were due at all, they were due to the poor, from whom they had been forcibly taken, and to whom in equity they still belonged; that no prince could alter the nature of right and wrong that tithes were not justly due to the church, because Offa wished them to be so, to expiate his own crimes; or because Ethelwolf wished them to be so, from a superstitious notion, that he might thus prevent the incursions of the Danes; or because Stephen wished them to be so, as his own grant expresses, on the principle, that “the bonds of sin might be dissolved, and that he might have a part with those, who by a happy kind of commerce exchanged heavenly things for earthly;” or because the popes of Rome wished them to be so, from whose jurisdiction all the subjects of England were discharged by law.

They resisted the payment of them, because, secondly, tithes had become of a compulsory nature, or because they were compelled to pay them.

They contended on this head, that tithes had been originally free will-offerings, but that by violence they had been changed into dues, to be collected by force; that nothing could be more clear, than that ministers of the Gospel, if the instructions of Jesus to his disciples were to be regarded, were not authorized even to demand, much less to force, a maintenance from others; and that any constrained payment of these,