The repugnance entertained by the Quakers against paying tithes appears to me to arise from an error in their mode of viewing the question. The assertion made by them “that all the provision made for ministers of the gospel in the first ages was made by the love of their flocks,” is true, though that love very soon produced endowments, even before Christianity was established as the law of the empire. But allowing this, it does not follow, as they go on to assert, that “since we are under the same dispensation of love as the Apostles were, the principles which governed the church then are to govern it now.” Tithes were originally given to the church as a corporation, by the owners of the soil; and since that time estates have been transferred from hand to hand subject to that charge, till no man has any plea for refusing it. The question is not one of religion but of property. If my estate devolve to me chargeable with an annuity payable either to a corporation or an individual, I have no right to set up his religious opinions in bar of his claim: for I have paid less for the purchase in consequence of the existence of that claim, which in common honesty therefore I am bound to satisfy, be the annuitant who he may. {29} Having now noticed the points wherein I consider the peculiar tenets of the Quakers to be erroneous, I shall conclude with the more agreeable part of my task, and prove by extracts from one of their writers how much of true Christian feeling exists among them. The following is from a little book given me by a Quaker, from the pen of J. Gurney, entitled “An Essay on Love to God.”