soul.^48 For without “an holy kinde of violence [a person can not] lay hold upon the
Kingdome of heaven, Mat. 11.12.”^49 Therefore, to counter the temptations and
allurement of the devil, Ambrose urges stirring up “violent affections” and being
responsive to “Gods merciful violence.”^50 Earlier Bernard employed vehement love
and violence when he discussed desire.^51 His usage asserted the “forceful, powerful,
even violent” nature of love.^52 Later in the same century Richard of St. Victor wrote a
brief but significant treatise entitled The Four Degrees of Violent Charity.^53 Further,
this language was not uncommon in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and appeared in
John Climacus.^54 Thomas Watson writing during Ambrose’s time published the most
sustained Puritan treatment of violence in Heaven Taken By Storm. Watson
understood that violence could be either positive or negative since it is a zealous or
fervent intentionality to act in a specific way. Therefore, he writes, “[w]ithout violent
affections we shall never resist violent temptations.”^55 The Puritans took seriously the
great entrenchment of sin and the entropy of the divided human heart. Indeed
violence was often associated with conversion, or the beginning of spiritual marriage.
Thomas Hooker declares “God doth by an holy kind of violence plucke the sinner
(^48) Ambrose, Looking Unto Jesus (^) , 369 and Media (1657), 224, 289.
(^49) Ambrose, Looking Unto Jesus, 1007.
(^50) Ambrose, Ultima in Prima, Media, Ultima (1654), 196 (incorrectly number 194)
and 51 War with Devils, 75.
92 McGinn, -3 and Burrows, “Erotic Christology.”Growth of Mysticism, 198, 203 - 4, 504n271. cf. Casey, Athirst for God,
(^52) McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, 203.
(^53) McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, 398-400, and esp. 413, 415-8.
(^54) Chryssavgis, “’Notion of “Divine Eros’,” 194.
(^55) Watson, Heaven Taken By Storm, 86. cf. Rutherford, Christ Dying, esp. 228, 282-
4, 308, 361-2. Sharon Achinstein devotes a chapter to violence and cites Watson’s
Heaven Taken By Storm as well as other sources; however, she conflates Watson’s
spiritual usage of violence with more physical expressions of destruction. and Dissent in Milton’s England, 84-114. Literature