Our Church Order (The Lesson of History)

In our previous essay we were engaged in an in­vestigation of the history of that action of the Chris­tian church consisting in its support of the service. During the life-time of the apostles the Christian churches, so we wrote, were in distinction from the Christian church (the hierarchy) of the middle ages, without an independent source of income of their own. An institution of charity, so we continued, possessing large estates or a huge sum of money on the revenues or interest of which it...