“These things being thus considered, let your most holy piety take into wise consideration whether it is well to impose upon an ignorant race, at the beginning of the faith, the yoke of tithes, so that they shall be fully exacted from house to house. It is worth considering whether the Apostles, taught by the God Christ Himself, and sent to preach to the world, required the exaction of tithes or anywhere demanded them. We know that the tithing of our substance is a very good thing; but it is better to sacrifice the tithe than to lose the faith. And indeed we, born and brought up and taught in the Catholic faith, scarce consent to tithe to the full our substance; how much does feeble faith not consent to the gift of tithe, and the infant will, and the covetous mind. But when faith has become strong, and the practice of Christianity is confirmed, then, as to perfect men, may stronger precepts be given, from which the mind, become solid in the Christian religion, may not recoil.” He then proceeds to urge that the adults of the conquered Huns shall not be baptized until they have first been carefully taught, “lest the ablution of sacred baptism of the body profit nothing.” On this subject of the baptism of the Huns a long report is found in a tenth-century collection of Alcuin’s letters, written by Paulinus the Patriarch of Aquileia, describing a discussion which took place at a meeting of bishops, or in the College of Bishops, summoned by King Pippin in the summer of this year 796. [Sidenote: Ep. 69.] In the autumn of 796, Alcuin again writes on the subject of tithes, this time addressing his friend[268] Megenfrid, the treasurer of the palace, and dealing not with the Huns, but with the Saxons. Alcuin writes to him as to one of the principal advisers of Karl, enters fully into the oft repeated argument about milk and strong meat, and arrives thus at his point. “If the yoke easy and the burden light of Christ had been preached to this most hard race, the Saxons, as carefully as the rendering of tithes was required, and the legal penalties for the very smallest faults, it may be that they would not have abhorred the sacraments of baptism. As to those who are sent to teach them, _sint praedicatores non praedatores_, let them preach, not prey.” [Sidenote: Ep. 71.] In another letter of that autumn, he sends full advice to Arno, the bishop of Salzburg, as to the manner of teaching the faith to the Huns. In the course of this letter he reminds Arno that the wretched race of the Saxons has repeatedly lost the sacrament of baptism, because it never had in heart the foundation of the faith.