pew-rent

There were letters from women seeking to know him, and over one such he smiled, for enclosed was her receipt for pew-rent, sent as evidence of her good faith and as proof of her respectability.

Chapter 46 2010

Now, brethren, I motion that we continner to give as much as five hundred dollars to the old Doctor, and make the best dicker we can with the new minister; and I'll clap ten dollars on to my pew-rent; and the Deacon there, if he's anything of a man, 'll do as much agin.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 Various

They like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of course; but yet, if they are brave and well-educated, the pew-rent is not the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole purpose of the baptism; the clergyman's object is essentially to baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching.

The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book Ontario. Ministry of Education

But the ability to eat mutton in its roasted form, by some odd law of nature, connotes the habit of paying your pew-rent regularly and of changing your flannels on the proper date.

The Cords of Vanity A Comedy of Shirking James Branch Cabell 1918

When one has paid his pew-rent and his dues, bought

Catholic Problems in Western Canada George Thomas Daly 1914

Council of Westminster (viii, De.bon. eccl.) enumerates: pew-rent, collections during Mass, seat money, alms contributed on the occasion of a sermon by a distinguished preacher, and house-to-house collections.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3: Brownson-Clairvaux 1840-1916 1913

There were letters from women seeking to know him, and over one such he smiled, for enclosed was her receipt for pew-rent, sent as evidence of her good faith and as proof of her respectability.

Chapter 46 1908

There could be no more melancholy exemplification of this than the spectacle of the Anglican and Catholic churches at the present time, one using the tragic stresses of war mainly for pew-rent touting, and the other paralysed by its Austrian and South German political connections from any clear utterance upon the moral issues of the war.

War and the future: Italy, France and Britain at war 1906

Not once was Browett permitted to feel himself more than one of a crowd; not once was he permitted to rise above his mere atomship, nor feel that he received more attention than the humblest worshipper in arrears for pew-rent.

The Seeker Harry Leon Wilson 1903

Where the curate leaves off and the pew-rent begins!

The Book of Humorous Verse Various 1902