sally departed from in Scotland, and the reason assigned is this: "The reader or precentor began the service with reading a chapter, and gave out a psalm as tbe minister came into church —so that the minister, the psalm being sung, began with prayer. Butthi tor's function has ceased since the middle or towards the end of last century, and the minister now begins with praise, doing himself what used to be done by his sub- ordinate." See l'i:i CEMTOR; K'l \l.li:.
In most of the American churches the principal ob- jecl of public worship is the expounding of the Word of God by the minister in a sermon. This is usually preceded by song and prayer and the reading of the Scriptures, and followed by prayer and song. The or- der of arrangement differs, being usually regarded as immaterial. See Church; Clergy; Litany; Pray- er; Worship.
Publican (reXwvnc). The word thus translated belongs only, iii the New Te.-t.. to the three Synoptic
Gospels. The class designated by the Greek word were
employed as collectors of the Roman revenue. The Latin word from which the English of the A. Y. has been taken was applied to a higher order of men. It will be necessary to glance at the financial administra- tion of the Roman provinces in order to understand the relation of the two classes to each other, and the grounds of the hatred and scorn which appear in the New Test to have fallen on the former.
The Roman senate had found it convenient, at a pe- riod as early as, if not earlier than, the second Punic war, to farm out at public auction the vectigalia (direct taxesi and the portoria (customs, including the octroi on goods carried into or out of cities) to capitalists who undertook to pay a given sum into the treasury licum), and so received the name of publicani il.ivy, xxxii. 7 ). Contracts of this kind fell naturally into the hands of the eguites, as the richest class of Romans. These knights were an order instituted as early as the time of Romulus, and composed of men of great consid- eration with the government- "the principal men of
dignity in their several countries." w b cupied a kind
of middle rank between the senators and the people (Josephus, Ant. xii, 4). Although these officers were, according to Cicero, the ornament of the city and the strength of tbe commonwealth, they did nol attain to great offices, nor enter the senate, so long as they con- tinue.1 in the order of knights. They were thus more capable of devoting their attention to the collection of the public revenue. Not unfrequenl 1\ the sum bidden w i in beyond the means of any individual capitalist, and a joint-stock company (societas) was formed, with one of the partners, or an agent appointed by them, acting as managing director (piagisler; Cicero. Ad Div. xiii. 9). Under this officer, who commonly resided at Koine, transacting the business of the company, paying profits to the partners and the like, were the submaffistri, liv- ing in l be provinces. Under them, in like mama r. were the portitores, the actual custom-house officers (doud- uh rs), who examined each bale of goods exported or im- ported, assessed its value more or less arbitrarily, wrote out the ticket, and enforced payment. The latttr were commonly natives of the province in which they were
stationed, as being brought daily into i tact with all
classes oi the population. The word rtKStvai, which
erymologically might have been used of the publicani
properly so called (Tt\)j, i.'ir.:ii;iiii'.«:is used popularly, and in the New Test, exclusively, of the portiioi es. The same practice prevailed in the East, from which an illus- tration oi it has been preserved - bj Josephus. He
tells us that on the marriage of Cleopatra to Ptolemy, the latter received from Anliocbus as his daughter's dowry Coele-Syria, Samaria, Judaea, and Phoenicia; thai
"u] the division ol the taxes between the t «.. kings.
the principal men farmed the taxes of their several
countries." paying to the kings the stipulated sum; and
thai "when the day came OH which the king was to let
i the taxes of the cities to farm, and those that were the
PUBLICAN
PUBLICAN
principal men of dignity in their several countries were to bid for them, the sura of the taxes together of Ccele- Syria, and Phoenicia, and Judaea, and Samaria, as they were bidden for, came to eight thousand talents" (Ant. xii, 4, 1, 4). Those thus spoken of by the Jewish his- torian as ''principal men of dignity" were the real pub- licani of antiquity. In the Roman empire especially they were persons of no small consequence ; in times of trouble they advanced large sums of money to the State, and towards the close of the republic they were so gen- erally members of the equestrian order that the words equites and publicani were sometimes used as synony- mous (Smith, Diet. Gr. and Pom. A ntiq. s. v.).
The publicani were thus an important section of the equestrian order. An orator wishing, for political pur- poses, to court that order, might describe them as ••rios equitum Romanorum, ornamentum civitatis, firmamen- tum Reipublica?" (Cicero, Pro Plane. 9). The system was, however, essentially a vicious one — the most de- testable, perhaps, of all modes of managing a revenue (comp. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, vol. ii), and it bore its natural fruits. The publicani were banded to- gether to support each other's interest, and at once re- sented and defied all interference (Livy, xxv, 3). They demanded severe laws, and put every such law into ex- ecution. Their agents, the portitores, were encouraged in the most vexatious or fraudulent exactions, and a remedy was all but impossible. The popular feeling ran strong even against the equestrian capitalists. The Macedonians complained, as soon as they were brought under Roman government, that " ubi publican us est, ibi aut jus publicum vanum,aut libertas sociis nulla" (Livy, xlv, 18). Cicero, in writing to his brother (Ad Quint. i, 1, 11), speaks of the difficulty of keeping the publicani within bounds, and yet not offending them, as the hard- est task of the governor of a province. Tacitus counted it as one bright feature of the ideal life of a people un- like his own that there "nee publicanus atterit" (Germ. 29). For a moment the capricious liberalism of Nero led him to entertain the thought of sweeping away the whole system of portoria ; but the conservatism of the senate, servile as it was in all things else, rose in arms against it, and the scheme was dropped (Tacitus, Ann. xiii, 50), and the " immodestia publicanorum" (ibid.) re- mained unchecked.