CLERG

1 definition found

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  CLERGY. All who are attached to the ecclesiastical ministry are called the 
  clergy; a clergyman is therefore an ecclesiastical minister. 
       2. Clergymen were exempted by the emperor Constantine from all civil 
  burdens. Baronius ad ann. 319, Sec. 30. Lord Coke says, 2 Inst. 3, 
  ecclesiastical persons have more and greater liberties than other of the 
  king's subjects, wherein to set down all, would take up a whole volume of 


  itself. 
       3. In the United States the clergy is not established by law, but each 
  congregation or church may choose its own clergyman.