learnt to come together to the national Witenagemot g.

At the time of Theodore's death the hope of a political union of the nation was faint and dim, and it seemed impossible that unity could come. For the next hundred years it was the Church alone which expressed a national consciousness; and the Church exercised an ever-deepening influence on English feeling. But in 802 Egbert became King of Wessex; under him the long severance of people from people at length broke down, and the whole English race in Britain was for the first time knit together under a single King. Thus it will be seen that whilst the Church of England existed in A.D. 597, the Kingdom of England did not exist till the Kingdoms of the Heptarchy were united under Egbert— A.D. 829. The first English Parliament was that of Merton in 1236- the first regular Parliament is usually dated at 1295-that is to say, the first regular Parliament sat nearly seven hundred years after the English Church was founded.

It is not, therefore, possible that the State could have established the Church; it would be nearer the truth to say that the Church established the State; that there is a Church-State rather than a StateChurch in England. And as it is not possible that the State could have established the Church, so

• Green's Making of England, p. 333.

history also shows that the State did not endow it. As the Church is the oldest institution, so is the property of the Church the oldest form of property in the country. The fallacy as to the Church having been endowed by the State rests on the same groundless assumptions as to its establishment by the State. Because pious kings in past ages built and endowed churches, not in their capacity as kings, but as great landowners, in their character as members of the Church acting under a deep sense of responsibility, the idea prevails with some people that the Crown, or the State, endowed the Church.

That Kings, acting as private individuals, and Nobles of England, founded the Church is plainly stated in the Statute of Provisors, which declared that "the Holy Church of England was founded" by the King's "progenitors, and the Earls, Barons, and other Nobles of the Realm, and their ancestors." The same proof as to its endowment is given in the Statute for the Restraint of Appeals, made against the claims of Rome: "The King's most noble Progenitors and the antecessors of the Nobles of this Realm have sufficiently endowed the said Church." Such language, coupling the Earls and Nobles of the Realm with the Kings of England, could not have

been used if it was meant to imply that the State or Crown had endowed the Church.

If, therefore, the property of the Church was given to it, not by the State, but by individual donors, it cannot be called national property, except in the sense that all property within the nation is national property. And there is sufficient reason to prove that it could not have been intended for any other religious community than the Church of England. It must be remembered that when the Church of England was first endowed there was only one Church in the land, and that was that branch of the Catholic Church which exists in the present day, and that it was taught and believed that except through that Church there was no salvation. Is it, therefore, reasonable to suppose that pious donors would have given their property for the endowment of any religion opposed to the religion of the Catholic Church, which they held to be the only true one1? Is it possible that they could have adopted a course which they believed in their hearts would be ruinous

* Cf. St. Cyprian, Ep. iv.: "Nemini salus nisi in Ecclesiâ esse potest." St. Irenæus Adversus Hæreses: "Spiritûs Sancti non sunt qui non concurrunt ad Ecclesiam, sed semet ipsos fraudant a vitâ." St. Augustin, Serm. cxxv. "Unica est Ecclesia... ab unitate ergo noli recedere, si non vis esse immunis a salute."

1 Cf. the words of the Litany: "From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; Good Lord, deliver us."

to the salvation not only of those who received their gifts, but also of themselves, who threw such a stumbling-block into the way of others?

But the Church of England, as a single body, has no property at all; there is no one corporation known to the Civil Law as the Church of England. The Church, as a single legal entity, has even no likeness to those corporations which exist around us. It has no formal charter or common seal; it cannot sue or be sued; it cannot acquire or dispose of property. If a testator were to bequeath a legacy in general terms to "the Church of England," the legacy would either fail from vagueness, or would have to be made matter of litigation, in order that a court of law might decide on the specific application, on the principle of cy près, to this or that particular and local purpose in connexion with the Church of England.

Church property was originally given, not to one corporation, but to numerous corporations. It was given to the Church of Canterbury, or the Church of York, to the Dean of some particular Cathedral, or to this or that particular parish; the charters of different churches and the deeds of the donors, whether kings, or nobles, or other landowners, specifying in each case the person or the place intended. These local bodies are known as corporations, some of which are designated as corporations aggregate, such as the Chapter of a Cathedral; others as corporations sole,

where lands or money were left to a single person, as a Bishop, or a Dean, or a Rector, or a Vicar.

We must draw attention to a mistake which exists in the present day as to the payment of tithes. Before there were any parishes, or any endowments, it was the custom of the Church to collect offerings from its members for the purposes of each diocese, which were brought into a common fund to be distributed by the Bishop. But one chief mode of providing for the Clergy was by tithe, which goes so far back in the history of the Church of England that it is impossible with any certainty to trace its origin. In very early ages of the Christian Church the practice, derived from the Jews (although not enforced by any laws), prevailed of Christians devoting the tithe, or tenth part of their earnings, to religious purposes, thus reserving the other nine parts to themselves. This practice Augustine probably brought into England". The Christian obligation to pay tithes became a Church Law in this country in the eighth century; the first mention of them being found in the "Excerptions" of Egbert, where, however, they are spoken of as being already in existence: "That tithes were paid in England

In the Laws of Edward the Confessor the obligation to pay tithes is said to have been introduced by Augustine: "Possibly," says Blackstone, on the Rights of Things, “tithes were contemporary with the planting of Christianity among the Saxons by St. Augustine about the end of the sixth century."