Standing Tiptoe

Some of George Herbert's most famous lines from The Temple (in The Church Militant) were the subject of controversy even before they made it into print. They almost failed the censorship test.

Izaac Walton, The Life of Mr. George Herbert, p. 110:

And this ought to be noted, that when Mr. [Nicholas] Farrer sent this book to Cambridge to be licensed for the press, the Vice-Chancellor would by no means allow the two so much noted verses,

Religion stands a tiptoe in our land,

Ready to pass to the American strand,

to be printed; and Mr. Farrer would by no means allow the book to be printed and want them. But after some time, and some arguments for and against their being made public, the Vice-chancellor said, "I knew Mr. Herbert well, and know that he had many heavenly speculations, and was a divine poet: but I hope the world will not take him to be an inspired prophet, and therefore I licence the whole book." So that it came to be printed without the diminution or addition of a syllable, since it was delivered into the hands of Mr. Duncon, save only that Mr. Farrer hath added that excellent Preface that is printed before it.

When those lines were quoted by Puritan minister Samuel Ward, they actually led to his imprisonment, thus proving Herbert right.

The charges leveled against Ward in November 1635 by none other than Archbishop William Laud included (William Prynne, Canterburies Doome, p. 361):

...preaching...against Bowing at the name of Jesus, the Booke of sports on the Lords day, and saying, that the Church of England was ready to ring the Changes, and insinuating unto his Auditory, that there was cause to fear an Alteration of Religion; saying, that Religion and the Gospel stood on tiptoes ready to be gone.

For these offenses, Ward was put in ward for "a long time" (according to Prynne). J.C. Ryle states that he removed to Holland after his release, and returned to his home parish of Ipswich in 1638, where he died the following year, having suffered in his homeland for the name of Jesus, while his brother Nathaniel Ward, who had gone to America in 1634, went on to author the famous Massachusetts Body of Liberties.

MHCC 41: Fox, Lion and Dog

Matthew Henry on Judges 9:

It is an account of the usurpation and tyranny of Abimelech, who was base son to Gideon; so we must call him, and not more modishly his natural son: he was so unlike him....Of this meteor, this ignis fatuus of a prince, that was not a protector but a plague to his country, we may say, as once was said of a great tyrant, that he came in like a fox, ruled like a lion, and died like a dog. "For the transgression of a land, such are the princes thereof."

John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, Vol. 1, p. 503:

Wherefore this Boniface [VIII] was worthily called the eighth Nero; of whom it was rightly said, He came in like a fox, reigned like a lion, and died like a dog.

Boniface VIII, consigned by Dante to the lowest circle of hell in his Inferno, ascended to the papacy by the art of craft (according to legend he engineered the abdication of Pope Celestine V, whom he succeeded, by rigging a tube into his room and persuading him that voice of God was instructing him to resign; Celestine was later captured, and possibly assassinated by Boniface), authored the Unam sanctam, "one of the most extreme statements of Papal spiritual supremacy ever made" (stating that it "is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff"), fought with King Philip IV of France, was captured and released, suffering the indignity of Sciarrillo Colonna's famous "Slap" in the face, but shortly thereafter died insane, supposedly gnawing off his own fingers.

Andrew Stevenson, The History of the Church and State of Scotland, Vol. 1, p. 115:

Nigh about this same time the good archbishop [George] Abbot died, and was succeeded in the see of Canterbury by [William] Laud bishop of London, of whom it may be said, as of old it was said of Boniface, Intravit ut vulpes, regnavit ut leo, obiit ut canis, "He came in like a fox, he reigned like a lion, and died like a dog."

Altar-Wise, Table-Wise

Like the Vestments controversy between Anglicans and Puritans, the controversy over the placement of the communion table in the church is difficult for modern minds to comprehend aright because of its seeming insignificance. The location of the communion table of course is itself a matter indifferent. The Puritan Westminster Confession (21.6) teaches that "Neither prayer, nor any other part of religious worship, is now, under the gospel, either tied unto, or made more acceptable by any place in which it is performed, or towards which it is directed." Yet, the battle for the placement of the communion table involved two distinct positions.

Samuel Gardiner articulates the contrasting points of view, History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War 1603-1642, Vol. 7, pp. 14-15:

To the Calvinist the pulpit was clearly the first thing in the Church, the place where the Divine Word, through the intervention of the understanding, was dispensed to hungry souls. To those who recurred to older Church traditions the communion-table, or, as they loved to call it, the altar, was worthy of the highest reverence, the place where holy mysteries were dispensed which raised man into communion with God without the intervention of the understanding. The one party would have had the table either standing permanently under the pulpit or brought out occasionally for its special purpose, to be placed 'table wise,' or east and west. The other party would have had it placed permanently 'altar wise,' or north and south, in the place of honour at the east end.

Those aligned with Archbishop William Laud, who first laid the groundwork for his position in a 1633 Act of Privy Council applicable to the church of St. Gregory beside St. Paul's, London, later enforced in a 1635 ruling applicable to the entire Church of England, argued that the mystical nature of the communion table required its permanent placement at the east end of the church in a north-south direction, set apart with rails, as an altar, attributing thus Popish ceremonial significance to the table. Especially in the context of other Anglo-Catholic measures, Puritans understood the meaning of this as articulated in the December 11, 1640 'Root and Branch Petition':

16. The turning of the Communion-table altar-wise, setting images, crucifixes, and conceits over them, and tapers and books upon them, and bowing or adoring to or before them; the reading of the second service at the altar, and forcing people to come up thither to receive, or else denying the sacrament to them; terming the altar to be the mercy-seat, or the place of God Almighty in the church, which is a plain device to usher in the Mass.

They argued instead of a permanent fixture of the table in a north-south direction, that it be placed in an east-west direction and be moveable, without rails. The theological significance of this position is not that east-west is somehow invested with greater spiritual benefit than north-south; on the contrary, the Laudian altar-wise party claimed that point for themselves. One Puritan, Daniel Cawdrey, was known to place the table altar-wise but move it table-wise at communion (Tom Webster, Godly clergy in early Stuart England: the Caroline Puritan movement, 1620-1643, p. 220), thus making the point that the direction was a matter of indifference, except that to the extent that superstitious ceremonial significance was to be resisted and not conceded.

The battle for the placement of the table resulted in not only a war of words, but ecclesiastical and civil enforcement measures and, in some cases, physical violence. Why such conflict over the location of a table which Biblically signifies the unity of Christ's Church? By attributing to it sacerdotal significance, the question of placement of the table was moved from the realm of circumstantial adiaphora to an infringement upon the regulative principle of worship. And thus, it became a battle over the crown prerogatives of Christ to alone dictate the ordinances of worship.

As Matthew Poole rightly stated (A Seasonable Apology of Religion), "What Galen said of Physics is even truer of religion. There is nothing small and trivial in it."