H. Lands and money payments made in lieu of tithes by the Inclosure Acts, 257. I. Gross annual amount of Church Revenues, and number of Benefices and Parsonage Houses, 258. _Index, pages 259-268._ INTRODUCTION. When engaged in writing the History of the Rise, Progress, and Present Position of the Ecclesiastical Commission for England, I had to deal with the endowments of the Church. My desire was to collect facts as to their origin in the Christian Church generally, and in the Church of England particularly. In searching after truth and facts, I experienced no little difficulty in arriving at correct conclusions, from the various contradictory statements on the subject. One party saw in the payment of tithes a continuity of old Scriptural laws in the Christian Church, payment which Christians were bound to make, whether they liked it or not; passages from the Old and New Testaments were distorted, and forced meanings given to them; apostolical constitutions were forged in support of their payment. What Isidore did as regards his forged decretals we find other writers did as regards tithes, and sham miracles are paraded in their works in support of tithes in the Christian Church. Another party, of whose views John Selden is the impartial exponent, took a more correct view of the subject, and denied that the patriarchal custom, or Mosaic law, bound Christians to the payment of tithes _quâ_ tithes. He asserted, with truth, that the Divine Founder of the Christian religion and His apostles left behind them no written instructions for the payment of tithes, but the latter did state how the ministers were to be maintained, viz., on the purely voluntary principle. I am certain it is against the whole tenour of the New Testament writings, that any funds for the support of those who minister at the altar, or in building or repairing sanctuaries for divine worship, should be collected _vi et armis_. It is revolting to all Christian principles enunciated in the New Testament, that men should be imprisoned, or their goods seized, or, even as it has happened in Ireland within this century, be shot dead, because they refuse to pay tithes. But there have been, and there are still, men in England who unblushingly justify all the above means by which an odious and unscriptural tax should be collected for the support of the ministers of the Church of England. Some foolish writers assert that the payment of tithes is not a tax. It is unquestionably a tax. On the other hand, there have been, and there are still, in England noble-minded, sympathetic, and large-hearted Christians, who have conscientiously opposed such taxation as unscriptural.