With an earthly priesthood naturally goes the provision of tithes. No one doubts that it was obligatory on Israel under the law, and that it was paid in patriarchal times (Gen. 14:28). It is a religious debt from man to God on earth.
But the redemption that is in Christ Jesus changes all things, or, as is said in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of law. For the Christian there is no priest but Christ Himself in God's presence on high. In another and real point of view all Christians are themselves priests. Every other notion of priesthood as now subsisting is false. And so for the Christian, for the church of God, any such provision is ignored in the N. T. Nor is this casual, but goes essentially with our heavenly relationship, even while we are personally here below. We are not of the world even as Christ is not. Temple, priesthood, victims, incense, rites, etc., were all alike earthly. The Christian is heavenly though on earth for the present.
Hence it may be observed that all who contend for tithes are wholly ignorant of the true and heavenly nature of the church, and for the most part fall back for support on what was said of old before the Son of God came and brought in all that now characterizes His own. If we are subject to the suited revelations of the Holy Spirit, we understand at once that it could not be otherwise without the grossest confusion. For we, believers now, are all members of Christ, and of Christ when exalted and glorified at God's right hand. As such is our privilege, of this nature is our responsibility. The sacrifice of Christ has blotted out our sins, and brought us nigh to God perfectly and therefore equally. A human or earthly priesthood is necessarily excluded, and evidently so, save where the efficacy of His death is clouded. Again, the Holy Ghost, on the ground of that accepted work, was sent down to baptize into the one body of Christ. This in no way sets aside the differences of place it pleased God to establish in the assembly. There are those whom He set first, and others in inferior position. There is all variety of gift; and this in exercise constitutes ministry. Nor is scripture silent that whether in the gospel or among the saints such are entitled to support and honor in the name of the Lord. But that one Christian should act as priest for others has no place save in the unauthorized tradition of man. The mere idea offends against the absolute nearness which Christ's work imparts, and the oneness of the body through the Spirit's presence and action. Consistently with this we hear no more of tithes. Any such earthly due to a religious caste nearer to God disappears.
The principle they lay down shows how far they are even from the perception of living Christianity. For they distinguish as Jews from voluntary offerings the tithes as due to God in right to dispose of as He thinks good. Now the gospel overturns all this through the surpassing grace of Christ and His fully revealed truth. For we are bought with a price, not our possessions only but ourselves, and are called to glorify God with our body, not merely with tithe and a freewill offering to boot. The Christian slave even is Christ's freedman; the Christian master is His bondman. Christ is all; and as He elevates the lowest into liberty of the truest and most enduring kind, so he makes the highest that know Him to be His willing slaves. And as to what self would call its possessions, the Lord has ruled (Luke 16) that we are but stewards now in what men view as ours. We do well to follow what was commended in the Unjust Steward. If faithful now in what is Another's, He will in the day of glory give us what He is pleased to call our own, even the true riches which have no wings and where is no thief. Hence the wisdom from above is to make to ourselves friends out of the mammon of unrighteousness, that, when it shall fail, we may be received into the everlasting tabernacles.
We are waiting for the appearing of our Lord. When Christ receives His own things, so shall we. As to all in our hands now, faith makes us disown the title of sense or reason, waiting for the day when with Him God will freely give us all things. For we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, and are meanwhile to walk by faith, not by sight. Along with this it is of the essence of the gospel that we were called for freedom, only not for the flesh (which we own condemned irremediably and by divine judgment in the cross), but through love servants one to another, because we are His. It is, or it ought to be, clear therefore that the Catholic Apostolic society is so much the more guilty in all this, because they profess to see what the church of God is, as they at any rate know that, and others in general do not see it; and again, because they claim the action of the Holy Spirit whose ministration is in Scripture set in the strongest contrast with that of the law which could only gender bondage, condemnation, and death. How distressing then to find that no dark traditional system of human thought and will exceeds, if it equal theirs, in turning back to the weak and beggarly elements whereunto they desire to be in servitude over again!
The following extract from the Regulations for the distribution of tithe (as given in Mr. Miller's Vol. ii. Appendix 9) will show, without argument, how far Irvingism is removed from Christian institutions and in principle Jewish, with all sorts of additions devised like Jeroboam's out of their own heart. The hand of lawyers is too plain in all.
“ 1. Every ordained priest, being a fixed and regular Minister in a Church, and giving up his whole time to his spiritual duties, receives some proportionate part of the Tithe of the Church. Such proportion (that is, the ratio, not the amount) to be the same in all Churches, and to be subject to arrangement by the elders of the Church Universal in such manner as circumstances may from time to time require. Supernumerary priests do not receive any fixed proportion of tithe, but may receive support from tithe in the manner thereinafter appointed.”
2. Every called priest, giving up his time to preparation for his spiritual duties, and to such subordinate offices as may be required of him, and every deacon giving up his time to his duties, may lawfully receive support from the tithe of the Church in which he is serving, after providing for the Angel and those already ordained to the priesthood.”
“3. In every Church the number of fixed and regular priests who, under Regulations, are to receive proportionate parts of tithe, is not to exceed the following: namely, one Angel, one Angel's Coadjutor, and such a number of priests as with the Angel and Angel's Coadjutor shall not exceed one to every fifty of the regular communicants. Nor in any Church is the number of fixed and regular priests to exceed the following: namely, Angel and Angel's Coadjutor, six Elders, six assistant Elders, and thirty-six other priests, of whom at least one-third should be Prophets and Evangelists. Any other priests employed in the service of the Church are to be considered supernumerary, and not entitled to fixed portions of tithe.”
“4. The precise number and class of fixed and regular priests who are to receive tithe in any Church within the above mentioned limits, will from time to time be decided by the Apostle in charge of the Church (i. e. of Tribe), whose sanction is also necessary of all supernumerary priests.”
What need of more, unless it be the opening of the Regulations in 1858, nine years after those cited? “God having given the Tithe of our Increase to be the endowment of His altar, He has placed the particular application of the same under the direction of the Apostles"!! Did it never occur to these persons that we have the Lord preparing the way for Christianity and the church in the Four Gospels, but not a hint of Christian tithe! We have a precise and comprehensive history of the gospel and the church, and the chief servants of the Lord for about thirty most eventful and instructive years, written by an inspired hand; but not a hint even here! We have Epistles written by the most honored in various ways of the apostles, expressly providing divine light, didactic, exhortatory, ecclesiastical, and pastoral; but not a hint in one of them!
We all ought to know how solemnly the apostles spoke of the departure at hand for the Christian profession. So it was, as the Spirit predicted.
Even during the earliest generation the testimony of the apostle Paul was very largely a series of conflicts with the inroads of Judaism even more than of Gentile philosophy. When his work closed, the ruin became as rapid as complete; but no one erred so grossly as to advocate tithe any more than priesthood among Christians. No doubt these mistakes and worse evils which defaced Christianity too soon followed.
Nor have any pushed to greater lengths the corruption from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ, cloaked under the plea of development. Scripture clearly warrants the use of water in baptism, of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. How does either give license to bring in the use of lights, incense, vestments, and the like, to say nothing of holy water? It is an impeachment of the fullness of divine wisdom in the written word of God, a presumptuous uprising of the church, instead of that single-eyed obedience which is of all price in God's sight. No doubt, the O. T. is also invoked to eke out the desired end. But this is unintelligent abuse, in the face of our authoritative instruction in the N. T. which gives the key of Christ to explain the spiritual meaning of these Levitical symbols, closed for the Christian in His work and offices, as the Epistle to the Hebrews shows us. To introduce them outwardly into the Church is to Judaize in fact. When God tried by law, man rebelled and violated it; when God proved its impotence and nailed it to the cross, man cleaves to it and makes it his idol, consistent only in his antagonism to God's will and glory.
The theory is a return to what was annulled in the cross as God made evident when the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom. What was this but God desecrating what once was holy? As He of old set aside Shiloh, so He did then with His house in Jerusalem, a yet more solemn and evident proof: only that He means to take it up again when the Lord returns to reign over the earth. Meanwhile all is gone for any such thing on earth. The sanctuary which the Lord pitches, and not man, is exclusively in heaven; and the true light which now shines makes manifest to the believing Jew (and of course to all others) that the sanctuary of the law was essentially worldly (Heb. 9:11Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary. (Hebrews 9:1)), as its sacrifices, ritual, and priesthood were but carnal ordinances.
This is what the Catholic Apostolic body, more guilty than others, would resuscitate from the grave of Christ, instead of holding fast the faith of Him dead, risen, and glorified, and drawing near to Him within the Holiest where He is. For this, and nothing less, we are exhorted to do now, though and while we are on earth. And therefore in the Epistle to the Hebrews faith is insisted on, not here so much to get life and righteousness and peace, as to worship and walk in it as a practical principle covering and influencing all our conversation here below. Therefore are those addressed so earnestly warned against craving after sensible objects and palpable helps, to which they had been accustomed in Judaism. On the face of it too all the church in Apostolic days met in the humblest way. It was not for lack of means or of liberality. There was no compulsion, no iron bond of law; but as many as were possessed of houses and lands sold them, and brought (not tithes, but) the prices of the things that were sold and laid them at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made to each, according as any one had need. It was a bright outshining of devotedness as they looked for the return of the Lord, the grace of Whom made earthly things of no account save to use them in love to each other.
But it never occurred to these saints, still less to the inspired apostles, to use their substance in purchasing or erecting fine buildings, or in departing from the original simplicity of the Lord's supper by the adornments of gold and silver, of pearls and gems, of purple and fine linen. They were as far as could he from borrowing the rhetoric of the schools to set off the truth, or from imitating in honor of the Father and the Son the musical attractions of Jews or Heathen in their defunct or dark systems respectively. We belong to Him Who is not here but risen and on high.
The ground of this radical difference is as obvious as it is all-important. In Christianity all that is justly boasted is the grace and truth that came by our Lord, and is now enjoyed by the power of the Spirit in the written word. It is no longer the mountain, nor even Jerusalem. As true worshippers we worship the Father. It must be, to be acceptable, in spirit and in truth. God and the Lamb are before the heart, which is led by the Holy Ghost to look on the unseen and eternal, the heavenly things, not the earthly.
As this bright reality faded for the saints of old, they lapsed more and more into Jewish thought and feeling; and natural resources were called in as faith grew feeble and low. Then the O. T. prophecies got misapplied, as the true and heavenly and earth-rejected character of the church was lost; so that baptized men began to dream that Israel was forever blotted out to make room for the Christian profession to enjoy earthly blessing, honor, and power. Thus was all the characteristic testimony of the church swamped; and the mystery of iniquity wrought into the mystery of Babylon the Great, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth.
There indeed earthly splendor is essential, for grace is unknown and truth is perverted and corrupted, if Babylon is to commit fornication with the kings of the earth and to intoxicate those that dwell on the earth. How sad to see those who used to profess the truth which judges this enormous imposture and unblushing worldliness now fallen in principle and practice into a similar dark pit! Yet who can wonder that, having lost the truth of the cross, they mind earthly things even more than the mass of Protestants?