The Tithing Man
TimeWatch Editorial
August 29, 2016
During the colonial years, the church maintained an attitude of coercion that they had brought with them to the new world. As we have described in our earlier editorials, the surveillance and persecutions of the inquisitorial years were extended to this new location. Years before the Constitution of the United States was written and ratified, the unforgiving insistence of church attendance and worship continued.
“THE most grotesque, the most extraordinary, the most highly colored figure in the dull New England church-life was the tithing man. This fairly burlesque creature impresses me always with a sense of unreality, of incongruity, of strange happening, like a jesting clown in a procession of monks, like a strain of low comedy in the sober religious drama of early New England .Puritan life ; so out of place, so unreal is this fussy, pompous, restless tithingman, with his fantastic wand of office fringed with dangling foxtails, creaking, bustling, strutting, peering around the quiet meeting-house, prodding and rapping the restless boys, waking the drowsy sleepers; for they slept in country churches in the seventeenth century, notwithstanding dread of fierce correction, just as they nod and doze and softly puff, unawakened and unrebuked, in village churches throughout New England in the nineteenth century. Alice Morse Earle’s “The Sabbath in Puritan New England," page 66
The incredibly insistent surveillance might appear peculiar, but a close investigation of history will reveal that this was the king of surveillance that persisted during the inquisition. Now in the colonial years the Pilgrims indulged that which they had learned.
“The tithing man had a “special eye out" on all bachelors, who were also carefully spied upon by the constables, deacons, elders, and heads of families in general. He might, perhaps, help to collect the ministerial rate, though his principal duty was by no means the collecting of tithes. He "chased the worn out people out of town." This warning was not at all because the new-comers were objectionable or undesired, but was simply a legal form of precaution, so that the parish would never be liable for the keeping of the “worn out " ones in case they thereafter became paupers. He administered the “oath of fidelity “to new inhabitants. The tithing man also watched to see that “no young people walked abroad on the eve of the Sabbath," that is, on a Saturday night. He also marked and reported all those “who lie at home," and others who " prophanely behaved, lingered without doors at meeting time on the Lords Day," all the " sons of Belial strutting about, setting on fences, and otherwise desecrating the day." These last two classes of offenders were first admonished by the tithing man, then “Set in stocks," and then cited before the Court. They were also confined in the cage on the meeting-house green, with the Lord's Day sleepers. The tithing man could arrest any who walked or rode at too fast a pace to and from meeting, and he could arrest any who “walked or rode unnecessarily on the Sabbath." Alice Morse Earle’s; “The Sabbath in Puritan New England," pages 74, 75
Great and small alike were under the control of the tithing man, as this notice from the “Columbian Sentinel” of December, 1789, abundantly proves. It is entitled " The President and the Tithing man:"
''The President [George Washington], on his return to New York from his late tour through Connecticut, having missed his way on Saturday, was obliged to ride a few miles on Sunday morning in order to gain the town at which he had proposed to have attended divine service. Before he arrived, however, he was met by a tithing man, who commanding him to stop, demanded the occasion of his riding; and it was not until the President had informed him of every circumstance and promised to go no further than the town intended that the tithing man would permit him to proceed on his journey.' Alice Morse Earle’s; “The Sabbath in Puritan New England," pages 74, 75
The question then must be, is this an indication of the future? Will a Sunday Law be accompanied by those who fill the role of the ancient tithing man?
“Thus it may be seen that the ancient tithing man was pre-eminently a general snook, to use an old and expressive word, an informer, both in and out of meeting, a very necessary, but somewhat odious, and certainly at times very absurd officer. He was in a degree a constable, a selectman, a teacher, a tax collector, an inspector, a sexton, a home-watcher, and above all, a Puritan Bumble. He was, in fact, a general law-enforcer and order-keeper, whose various duties, wherever still necessary and still performed, are now apportioned to several individuals. The ecclesiastical functions and authority of the tithing man lingered long after the civil powers had been removed or had gradually passed away from his office. Persons are now living who in their early and unruly youth were rapped at and pointed at by a New England tithing man when they laughed or were noisy in meeting. Alice Morse Earle’s “The Sabbath in Puritan New England," pages 76
My suggestion would therefore be that we take seriously the events of the past in preparation for the future. Notice the warnings given in the book “The Great Controversy” on page 581.
“God's Word has given warning of the impending danger; let this be unheeded, and the Protestant world will learn what the purposes of Rome really are, only when it is too late to escape the snare. She is silently growing into power. Her doctrines are exerting their influence in legislative halls, in the churches, and in the hearts of men. She is piling up her lofty and massive structures, in the secret recesses of which her former persecutions will be repeated. Stealthily and unsuspectedly she is strengthening her forces to further her own ends when the time shall come for her to strike. All that she desires is vantage-ground, and this is already being given her. We shall soon see and shall feel what the purpose of the Roman element is. Whoever shall believe and obey the Word of God will thereby incur reproach and persecution.” {The Great Controversy 581.1}
Therefore, be warned!
Cameron A. Bowen
