true Ignatian form, and to savor and enjoy it. Conversely, Puritans were usually
taught to explore and apply the insights to their own lives and to discover the value of
that experience. Eighth, given Puritans’ later origin and focus on the priesthood of all
believers all people were expected to participate in spiritual disciplines. In practice, it
was not until the seventeenth-century that the majority of lay people in Roman
Catholicism gained regular access to the same means to enter into these disciplines.
Finally, in Puritanism the structure and method of the sermon was the foundation for
meditation.^64 That served to both democratize meditation and to model it weekly in
the sermons of public worship. This was normally absent in Roman Catholicism due
to the irregularity of preaching and the lack of making this connection between
sermon and meditation. However, Granada is an exception asserting, “there is no
difference betweene a Sermon and Consideration.”^65 Therefore, the Puritan approach
to meditation is both derivative and yet distinctive in certain ways. While this
summary sketches the larger background and comparison regarding meditation
methods and guides in reading Ambrose the emphasis must now focus more narrowly
on him.
Historical Roots of Contemplation in the Writings of Isaac Ambrose
Ambrose’s frequent practice of quoting patristic, medieval, and contemporary
sources has been evident throughout this thesis. This raises the question of the
sources that may have inspired him. Gilson, writing from within the context of
Bernardine research, declares the challenging nature of this task; “[t]he influence of
one work on another is not to be proved from the fact that they contain formulas that
64
(^65) Granada, Lewalski, Treatise of Consideration and PrayerProtestant Poetics, 152-5, cf. 157 for Ambrose’s reflection of this., 6.