n the point in or before 1556, and he
answered ('Works,' iv. 127), 'Touching Tithes, by the law of God they
appertain to no priest, for now we have no levitical priesthood; but by
law, positive gift, custom, they appertain to princes, and by their
commandment to "men of kirk," as they would be termed. In their first
donation respect was had to another end, as their own law doth witness,
than now is observed. For first, respect was had that such as were
accounted distributors of those things that were given to churchmen,
should have their reasonable sustentation of the same, making just
account of the rest, how it was to be bestowed upon the poor, the
stranger, the widow, the fatherless, _for whose relief all such rents
and duties were chiefly appointed to the church_. Secondly, that
provision should be made for the ministers of the church, &c.'

[91] 'Works,' ii. 340.

[92] Thomassin, a very great authority, devotes no fewer than eight
chapters of his third folio _De Beneficiis_ to proving from Councils and
the Fathers that 'Res Ecclesiae, res et patrimonia sunt pauperum. Earum
beneficiarii non domini sunt sed dispensatores.' After voluminous
evidence from all the centuries, he holds it superfluously plain that
all beneficed men are 'mere dispensers and administrators, not
proprietors nor even possessors, of what is truly the patrimony of the
poor,' and what is held as trustee for the indigent by Christ Himself;
so much so, that when this property of the poor is diverted to support a
bishop or other dignitary, he is not entitled to enjoy his house, table,
or garments, unless these have a certain suggestion and savour of
destitution--_necesse est paupertatis odore aliquo perfundi_.
Thomassin, of course, holds that the Church has a divine right to
tithes; but it is a divine right to administer, not to enjoy, them. Knox
and the Reformers denied the divine right even to administer: they urged
that the State should make the Kirk _its_ administrators.

[93] For them too, and even for the strong and sturdy and the Jolly
Beggars among them, he had a certain fellow-feeling; as is witnessed by
the zest with which he records their 'Warning' (p. 82). The one point,
indeed, at which Knox and Burns come together is 'A man's a man for a'
that!'

[94] 'Works,' ii. 183 to 260.

[95] I am indebted for this view to Dr. A.F. Mitchell, Emeritus
Professor of Church History in St Andrews, to whom all are indebted who
are interested in t