Friday, March 19, 2010

A Selection of Post-Tithe Quotes: Early 1800s

Adam Clarke (ca. 1762–1832)

“I say again, let there be a national religion, and a national clergy supported by the state; but let them be supported by a tax, not by tithes, or rather let them be paid out of the general taxation; or, if the tithe system must be continued, let the poor-rates be abolished, and the clergy, out of the tithes, support the poor in their respective parishes, as was the original custom.”

Adam Clarke, Clarke’s Commentary: A New Edition, with the Author’s Final Corrections,

6 vols. (New York: Methodist Book Concern, 1846), 1:179-80.


Charles Buck (English; 1833)

His article on tithing stated that nothing in the New Testament commanded tithing since “the divine right by which they were raised necessarily ceased.”

Charles Buck, “Tithes,” in A Theological Dictionary, new ed.,

edited by E. Henderson (London: James Duncan, 1833), 905-06.


J. Newton Brown (Baptist; 1836)

John Newton Brown (1803–1868), who wrote the draft of the New Hampshire Confession of Faith (1833), edited an encyclopedia. The article on tithes in this encyclopedia (published in 1836) explicitly said they ceased. The New Hampshire Confession of Faith was a precursor to the Baptist Faith and Message.

J. Newton Brown, ed., “Tithes,” in Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge,

2 vols. (Brattleboro: Fessenden, 1836), 2:1124.



G. Campbell Morgan (English Congregationalist; 1898)

“I hear a great deal about the tithing of incomes. I have no sympathy with the movement at all. A tenth in the case of one man is meanness, and in the case of another man is dishonesty. I know

men today who are Christian men in city churches and village chapels, who have no business to give a tenth of their income to the work of God. They cannot afford it. I know other men who

are giving one-tenth, and the nine-tenths they keep is doing harm to their souls.

G. Campbell Morgan, The Westminster Pulpit, 10 vols.,

1906–1916, reprint (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 4:40.

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