Digital Puritan Page

This page lists Ambrose's works and gives online links.

PRDL Links

Here is a good page of links to Ambrose's works in pdf form

Some Quotations

Oh! How should all hearts be taken with this Christ? Why stand ye gazing on the toys of this world, when such a Christ is offered to you in the Gospel? Can the world die for you?

Looking unto Jesus

Any feeble David may wrestle with Goliath, so long as the battle is the Lord's; and the warrior comes to the field in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel.

Christian Warrior p 10

Sin, like a black river of poison, flows from Adam, through one generation after another, to the end of the world.

Christian Warrior p 21

Holy thoughts are precious things; they are God's messengers; they come from God, and lead to God again. Wherever they are entertained, they bestow exceeding great rewards. Therefore cherish
these motions of the Spirit, and know that they come from heaven to benefit thy soul..

Christian Warrior p 31

The flesh is a worse enemy than the devil himself.

Christian Warrior p 35

Judas sinned more grievously by despairing of mercy, than by betraying his Master; and Cain sinned more by thinking his sins to be more than God could pardon, than by killing his brother. Despair is the sin of hell.
Christian Warrior p 45

Christian, you cannot but long for your heavenly home, for in those blessed mansions above, you shall have a pure company, out of the reach of danger and temptations. There is no devil in heaven, they were cast out longago, and we are to fill up their vacant places.
Christian Warrior p 88

O Christian, never be proud of things that are so transient, injurious, and uncertain as the riches of this evil world! But set your heart on the true and durable riches of grace in Christ Jesus.

Christian Warrior p 101

Errors are sown thicker in times of revival in the church of God than at any other times.

Christian Warrior p 125

Use thy duties, as Noah's dove did her wings, to carry thee to the ark of the Lord Jesus Christ, where only there is rest.

Premia, Media and Ultima

Books in print

Currently in print: Christian Warrior and Looking unto Jesus. Link here.

Article by Tom Schwanda

An article by Schwanda on Ambrose can be found here

Halley on Ambrose 2

Wood says: 'He was then a zealous man for carrying on the beloved cause, and acting against the orthodox clergy, when he was appointed an assistant to the commissioners for the ejecting of such as they called scandalous and ignorant ministers and schoolmasters.' Isaac Ambrose was not likely to trouble any minister or schoolmaster who was competent and willing to discharge the duties of his office. On the contrary, the following certificate, found among the Ffarington papers, shows his readiness to assist those of the opposite party who were involved in trouble:

'The humble certificate of Isaac Ambrose, minister of God's word in the church of Preston, showeth,

'That to his knowledge William Ffarington of Worden in the county of Lancaster was, before these unhappy times of war, a gentleman well affected to the Protestant religion, and a constant frequenter of our weekly lectures and other ordinances of religion. As also in the beginning of those times he was a man of peaceable disposition, bending all his counsels to the accommodation and quiet of the country; and in particular out of his love and respect for the ministry engaged himself for me (body for body and all his estate) when I was taken prisoner by the commissioners of array in the said county. Whereupon he procured my liberty, and in his own person he brought me home to my wife and children, withal offering me and mine all the kindnesses in his power. And since that time he was never a soldier. Nor in the time of our exile did I ever hear that he was active against the king and parliament. To this certificate at his desire in very equity I cannot but subscribe.—Isaac Ambrose.

'Preston: May 18, 1647.'*

Amidst the incivilities common on both sides during the civil war, it is pleasing to meet with such instances of mutual courtesy and kindness. As the squire, though a Royalist, was 'well affected to the Protestant religion,' Ambrose was well affected to him. Had he been a Papist, Ambrose, if we may judge from a passage in his 'Experiences,' would not have been so ready to recommend him for a lenient composition. In his ' Media' occurs the following entry under the head of ' Experiences' (section vi.):—

'1643. Feb. 6. Preston was taken by the parliamentary forces. Several Papists slain in it; some naturally of good disposition, and, therefore, many mourned their untimely death, but rejoiced in the accomplishment of the promise.

'Text. Rev. xvi. 6, 7. "They have shed the blood of saints, and thou hast given them blood to drink. . . Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgements."
'Rev. xviii. 20. "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her."'

Notwithstanding this strange' experience,' I am sure the 'naturally good disposition' of Isaac Ambrose would have saved even a Papist from death, if he had an opportunity.

So long as Ambrose continued in Preston he was favoured with the friendship of the Hoghton family, who were among his regular and admiring hearers. The beautiful woods of the tower provided him with sequestered places sacred to devout meditation,** while frequently within its hospitable walls he was refreshed by social intercourse with 'famous ministers.' Why he left his great congregation at Preston does not appear, but it is evident, from an extract already cited from his sermon preached at the funeral of Lady Margaret, that his leaving was not agreeable to the Hoghton family. On the occasion of his preaching that sermon, the interest excited was so intense, and the crowd so oppressive, that with great difficulty the funeral procession obtained an entrance into the church. The voice of the pathetic preacher was often interrupted and overcome by the lamentations of the people.

But Ambrose, for some good reason I doubt not, left Preston and became minister of Garstang. Elected during the Commonwealth in what was afterwards thought an irregular manner—that is, by the voice of the people—his name is not inserted in the approved lists of the Garstang vicars. But vicar he was legally as well as ostensibly, on the passing of the Act of Uniformity. He could conscientiously have complied with many of the requirements of the Act; he was willing to read the Book of Common Prayer; he was rebuked for his feebleness in making concessions by Dr. Cole, his successor at Preston; but in the hour of trial the feeble grew strong, and the strong man fainted. We have already seen how Cole conformed, and we now see how Ambrose was ejected.***

We know but little of the subsequent life of the Nonconformist. He spent his later years in meditation and quietude among his friends in Preston. A lover of nature as well as of God, like his namesake the patriarch, 'Isaac went out to meditate in the field at eventide.' He spent a great part of his time every summer in Widdicre wood, where, seldom seen by any, except on the Sabbath, he communed with his own heart and his God. The last time he was seen alive was by some friends from Garstang, of whom he is said to have taken leave with unusual affection and solemnity. Immediately after they left him he retired to his place of meditation, where he was found by an attendant in the moment of death. He departed in 1664 at the age of sixty-one.****

Of the Lancashire Nonconformists Isaac Ambrose is better known as a practical writer than any other. His book entitled 'Looking to Jesus' was at one time very popular with devout people in the north of England, and is still read by those who retain a relish for puritan divinity. Of the writers of his age and opinions, some who seem to me very inferior to him have been more highly recommended. Doddridge, in his account of nonconformist writers, does not notice him, although those who knew him would, I think, prefer him to Manton or Bates, whom Doddridge highly commends. He has been compared with Flavel, whom in some respects he resembles, but to whom in others he is very unlike. The great fault of Ambrose is found in the awkward arrangements and complicated divisions with which he wearies and perplexes his readers. Frequently he introduces materials remotely connected with his subject, and makes digressions of an intolerable length. Although more artificial (if it be artifice and not carelessness) in his method than Flavel, he is more easy, natural, and appropriate in his illustrations. More judicious than Flavel, he had a finer imagination and much more of true poetry. If not so sensitive, so plaintive, so ready to weep, as Flavel, there is in him deeper and more varied feeling, often restrained and often beautifully expressed. Flavel spiritualised the works of man's husbandry; Ambrose the works of God in nature. Flavel loved the garden and the corn-field; Ambrose the heath and the forest. Isaac loved to meditate in the evening in the quiet wood, and tell the people on Sunday morning what he had seen and felt in his lonely retreat. His meditations seem fragrant with the sweet hawthorn of Widdicre wood and the weeping birches of Darwen water. But at times he could leave his woods and streams, and present in their simple grandeur objects of infinite importance. Telling us to look to Jesus, how clearly and impressively he presents the Saviour alone in all the varied aspects of His character and changes of His life! Taking us to the palace of the high priest or the judgement hall of Pilate, he says, as few men ever said it, Ecce Homo! and Ecce Deus! and we see the man of sorrows and yet exclaim, ' My Lord and my God!' Many who have no love to puritan doctrine, nor sympathy with puritan experience, have appreciated with Joseph Hunter 'the pathos and beauty' of the writings of Isaac Ambrose.

* The object of this certificate was to obtain a favourable consideration for Mr. Ffarington on his compounding for his estates before the commissioners who met in Goldsmiths' Hall, London. How far it prevailed to induce the commissioners to treat the ' constant frequenter of weekly lectures' with lenity I cannot say, but his composition was fixed at £531. The list of Lancashire gentlemen assessed contains the names of one hundred and forty-six persons, of whom only seven were assessed at a larger sum. The head of the family to which Isaac Ambrose is said (though I think with little probability) to have belonged, William Ambrose of Lowick, was amerced £129.—Baines's Lancashire, vol. ii. p. 35. After the Restoration, when it was proposed to create a new order of knighthood, the estate of William Ffarington of Worden, proposed to be one of the 'knights of the royal oak,' was valued at £1000 a year.
** Every spring, while he was minister of Preston, he paid a visit of some days to the tower, and passed much of his time in the woods overhanging the stream, where he found, as he said, 'his best school of theology.' The Darwen was then the resort of salmon and trout, not as now of madder and indigo.
*** Calamy and Palmer refer to Cole as having subsequently conformed; but it is not certain that he was ever ejected. He favoured Ambrose with a commendatory letter which was appended to the treatise upon the Ministration of Angels. It is about as pedantic and pretentious a letter as was ever written even by a doctor in divinity. What worse can be said of it I know not. It is not surpassed in pedantry and pretence by any of Dr. Parr's letters.
**** Under the portrait prefixed to his collected works, he is said to have been fifty-nine in 1663. Calamy says, 'He died cet. 72;' but this is certainly a mistake.
Wood had, I suppose, some reason for calling him a minister's son. I find two vicars of Ormskirk named Ambrose, Richard and Henry: Richard died in 1612, and Henry succeeded in 1615. As the intervening vicar resigned in favour of the latter, I suspect the Earl of Derby, who was the patron, made the arrangement for the benefit of Henry. If it were so, he was probably a son of Richard, not of sufficient age on the death of his father to take the vicarage. As Isaac Ambrose was born in 1604, he might have been a son of Richard and a younger brother of Henry. Among the ejected ministers of Lancashire were Joshua Ambrose of West Derby, who afterwards conformed, and Nehemiah Ambrose of Kirkby. I know nothing of the parentage of either, although I cannot but think that Isaac, Joshua, and Nehemiah Ambrose were somehow related.

Halley on Ambrose 1

Isaac Ambrose was, on the passing of the Act, vicar of Garstang. Although his practical and devotional works were very popular among the early Nonconformists, few memorials of his life have been preserved. All who have read his devout meditations, his sweet experiences, or his fervent prayers, must unite in the regret and the wish expressed by Mr. Hunter in his preface to the ' Life of Oliver Heywood :''Mr. Ambrose earnestly recommended the keeping of diaries, as eminently serviceable to those who made it a principal object of their lives to establish themselves in all the thoughts and ways of piety, and in the book which he entitled "Media," he gives a specimen of what, in his opinion, such diaries ought to be, by extracts from his own. With such specimens before us, we cannot but lament that the carelessness of later times should have suffered such a curious and valuable document to perish, for perished it is feared it is. There is a pathos and beauty in some of the passages which he has selected, as when he speaks of his occasional retirement to the sweet woods of Widdicre, which make one wish for more.'

This reference is to the tenth section of the fourth chapter of the 'Media,' in which Ambrose gives 'some example of a daily register of a poor unworthy servant of Christ.' The date of the year is not given, but the month of the extracts was May, in which it was his annual custom to retire to a little hut in a wood, and in entire seclusion to spend most of his time in meditation and prayer. There originated the meditations which long after his death refreshed and comforted the Puritans of Lancashire.

As the 'specimen' may interest others as it did Mr. Hunter, and as it affords a pleasing illustration of the most meditative Puritan of Lancashire, I give it at length:—

'May 13. I retired to a solitary and silent place to practise especially the secret duties of a Christian. My ground is that of Cant. vii. 11, 12: "Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field, &c, there will I give thee my loves." The bridegroom of our souls (said Bernard) is bashful, and more frequently visits his bride in the solitary places.

'May 14. In a pleasant wood, and sweet walks in it, the Lord moved and enabled me to begin the exercise of secret duties: and after the prolegomena, or duties in general, I fell on that duty of watchfulness: the Lord then gave me to observe my former negligence, and to make some resolutions. I found the Lord sweet to me in the conclusion of the duty. Allelujah.

'May 15. I fell on the duty of self-trial, and in the morning confessed my sins before and since conversion, wherein the Lord sweetly melted my heart. In the evening I perused my diary for the last year, wherein are many passages of mercies from God, and troubles for sin, &c.

'May 16. In the morning I went through the duty of experiences, and felt some stirrings of God's Spirit in my soul. In the evening I fell on the duty of evidences, when I acted faith, and found my evidences clear. Oh how sweet was my God!

'May 17. This day in the morning I meditated on the love of Christ, wherein Christ appeared, and melted my heart in many sweet passages. In the evening I meditated on eternity of hell, and on eternity of heaven, wherein the Lord both melted, and cheered, and warmed, and refreshed my soul. Surely the touches of God's Spirit are as sensible as any outward touches. Allelujah.

'May 19. In the former part of this day, I exercised the life of faith, when the Lord strengthened me to act faith on several promises, both temporal, spiritual, and eternal; I had then sweet, refreshing, and encouraging impressions on my soul against all the fearful, sinful, and doubtful dreams I had the night or two before dreamed. In the evening I considered the duty of prayer, observed some workings of God's Spirit in my perusing the rules, and afterwards in the practice of this duty. Blessed be God!

'May 20. In the morning I fell on reading the word, perused the directions, and then searched into the common places and uses of my corruptions in nature and practice; of my comforts against the burthens of my daily infirmities; of establishing my heart against the fear of falling away ; of directions in my calling; of comforts against outward crosses; of my privileges in Christ above all the wicked in the world: in every of these Christ appeared in some measure suitably to my soul. In the evening I proceeded in the common places and uses of sweet passages that melted my heart; of sensible comforts, and of places hard to be understood: in the first my heart was sweetly melted, in the second cheered; in the conclusion the Lord struck me with a reverence of His majesty and presence, filled my soul with spiritual refreshings, enlarged my heart with praises of Him, and desires to live unto Him, who hath given me in this time of love so many visits, and kisses of His mouth. Allelujah.

'May 22. Occasionally, though not in course, I fell on some parts of the duty of self-denial: the Lord in mercy wrought in my soul some suitableness to that spiritual gospel-duty; Lord, keep this fire up in a flame still. Oh it is a sweet, but a very hard lesson.

'May 31. I practised (as the Lord enabled) the duty of saints' sufferings; into which condition as I was cast, so the Lord gave me to see my sin and to bewail it, and to pray for the contrary, grace and God's favour. The Lord was sweet to me in the preparations to, but especially in the improving of, sufferings. Now the Spirit left in my soul a sweet scent and savour behind it. Amen. Amen.'

Through the loss of his diary, I can collect only a very imperfect biography of Isaac Ambrose. From his 'Media,' under the head of 'Experiences,' a few incidents of his life may be gleaned, and elsewhere a very few more.

According to Anthony Wood, he was ' a minister's son descending from those of the name living at Lowick, and they from the Ambroses of Ambrose Hall in Lancashire.' If this be true, of which I am very doubtful, it would be interesting to know how, as the Ambroses of Lowick were among the most persistent Catholics of Lancashire, Isaac or his father, the minister, became a Protestant. Although there are in his writings many references to the Papists, he makes no allusion to his conversion from popery, or to any Catholic relatives or associations. There is, however, no reason to doubt that he was a minister's son, and a native of Lancashire. He entered at Brasenose, Oxon, in 1621, in the seventeenth year of his age. Having taken a degree in arts and obtained orders, he served 'a little cure' in Derbyshire. This 'little cure,' like many others in that county, seems to have been very little indeed, for while serving it he was refreshed by some charitable relief of the Earl of Bedford. By the influence of that nobleman, as Wood tells us, he was appointed one of the king's itinerant preachers in Lancashire. Having served for a time a curacy in Garstang, he was selected by that patroness of godly ministers, Lady Margaret Hoghton, to occupy the important position of Vicar of Preston.*
* 'I speak my own loss. She was pleased to cast her affections upon me, unworthiest of all my Master's messengers. In her lifetime she preferred me to this place. The Lord made her the first wheel of His providence in bringing me hither, and it was some trouble to her that I left this pastoral charge before she left the world.'—Sermon preached at Preston, at the funeral of Lady Margaret Hoghton, by Isaac Ambrose.

Wood says 'he received the appointment to Preston in 1648,' but it must have been received earlier, as in the Ordinance for the establishment of the presbyterian classes, dated October 1646, he is included in the seventh classis as minister of Preston, and in a certificate dated May 18, 1647, he calls himself minister of God's word in the church of Preston.