Superstitious Use

English law. When lands, tenements, rents, goods or chattels are given, secured or appointed for and toward the maintenance of a priest or chaplain to say mass; for the maintenance of a priest, or other man, to pray for the soul of any dead man, in such a church or elsewhere; to have and maintain perpetual obits, lamps, torches, etc., to be used at certain times to help to save the souls of men out of purgatory; in such cases the king by force of several statutes, is authorized to direct and appoint all such uses to such purposes as are truly charitable.

In the United States, where all religious opinions are free and the right to exercise them is secured to the people, a bequest to support a catholic priest, aud perhaps certain other uses in England, would not in this country be considered as superstitious uses. It is not easy to see how there can be a superstitious use in this country, at least in the acceptation of the British courts.
   

This entry contains material from Bouvier's Legal Dictionary, a work published in the 1850's.