Puritan's placing of the communion table?

SolaGratia · #1 (**permalink**) 05-14-2008, 10:26 PM

Does anyone know if it is true that the Puritans placed the communion table in an east to west position?

NaphtaliPress · #2 (**permalink**) 05-14-2008, 10:28 PM

I think Rowland Ward discusses aspects of the debate over Table use in Richard A. Muller and Rowland S. Ward, Scripture and Worship: Biblical Interpretation and the Directory for Public Worship (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R Publishing, 2007; x + 181). But I don't know if he discusses that.

VirginiaHuguenot · #3 (**permalink**) 05-19-2008, 09:34 PM

Rowland Ward does not mention the issue in that particular book. It was a matter of controversy, however, between Archbishop Laud and the Puritans of his day as to how the communion table was placed, whether "altar-wise" (ie., north-south), per Laud's directive, or "table-wise" (ie., east-west), as preferred by the Puritans (December 11, 1640 'Root and Branch Petition': "16. The turning of the Communion-table altar-wise...").

py3ak · #4 (**permalink**) 05-19-2008, 09:41 PM

Andrew, would I be right in thinking that the Puritans argued for East-West on the basis of the orientation of the churches they were already in and not for another reason? That is, if in a given church putting it North-South had been "table-wise" they would have accepted that with no difficulty?

VirginiaHuguenot · #5 (**permalink**) 05-19-2008, 09:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by py3ak

Andrew, would I be right in thinking that the Puritans argued for East-West on the basis of the orientation of the churches they were already in and not for another reason? That is, if in a given church putting it North-South had been "table-wise" they would have accepted that with no difficulty?

I believe this is a fair assessment. The custom was to have the table placed east-west, yet moveable, and it was Laud who instituted a programme of reorienting the tables north-south, in a fixed (set apart with rails) designated location at the east end of the chapel, for the specific purpose of representing the table as an 'altar.' It seems like a little thing unless one understands the theological significance of what Laud was doing. FWIW, 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).

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

Quote:

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.

The key thing to note is that neither direction was more holy than another (WCF 21.6: "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..."), but the superstition involved in Laud's programme was to be resisted.