attentiveness and responsiveness to God. Whether Ambrose, or any one else,
experiences God in a contemplative way, is always determined by God’s grace and
not human effort. However, that does not minimize the importance of effort in
forming the pattern of receptivity and responsiveness to God. Interestingly,
Ambrose’s practice appears to mirror Bernard, for whom according to Leclercq,
“there can be no “mystical” experience without prior “ascetic” experience.”^153
While Ambrose was the only person that I have discovered in the seventeenth-
century to take month-long retreats there were others who cultivated a similar
intensity for shorter periods. On the continent, Theodorus a’ Brakel, one of the
primary leaders of Dutch Pietism, was known for his intense spiritual practices that
could incredibly occupy up to eight hours a day even though he was married with
children.^154 It is little wonder that these examples, which were more the norm than
the exception, inspired Packer to refer to Puritanism as “reformed monasticism.”^155
Similarly Hambrick-Stowe asserts “[t]he contemplative [Puritan] is distinguished
from the common practicing believer by the regularity, protractedness, and continuing
intensity of the exercises.” And further due to the intensity of Puritan devotional
practices “perhaps most of the clergy---and women who might be described by the
phrase “Puritan contemplative.”^156 This should not imply that Lutherans and Roman
Catholics, both ministers and laity alike, were not also disciplined in spiritual
153
streams of Puritan meditation, the ascetical strain, in which Leclercq, Bernard of Clairvaux, 35. Chan’s research suggests there are two major he places Ambrose, and
the Spirit enthusiastic strain. “Puritan Meditative Tradition,” 164, 216. 154
de Reuver, Sweet Communion, 167-8, cf. 107, 109 for the example of Willem
Teellinck. 155
156 Packer, Quest for Godliness, 28, 331.^
Hambrick-Stowe, Practice of Piety, 285, 287. cf. Bozeman, Precisianist Strain,
103, 174, 177; Lovelace, American Pietism Cotton Mather, 124-6; Hinson, “Puritan
Spirituality,” 172, 177; and Williams, “Puritan Enjoyment of God,” 131examples of the monastic intensity of especially Puritan laity. - 3 for