unlike Bernard, Ambrose does not use the language of spiritual inebriation for ecstasy
that Williams maintains “was often compared to intoxication.^91
It is apparent from Ambrose’s three-fold description that this was a landmark
spiritual experience. The “Lord cast” him into this experience, that is it came by
God’s grace and initiative, not his own. This does not imply that his spiritual duties
did not prepare a greater degree of receptivity since in fact he maintains that “in and
after Ordinances” these experiences occurred. Unlike Bernard who spoke of the
brevity of these ecstatic encounters Ambrose is carried away by joy for two days.
Extravagantly and lavishly he piles the descriptions on top of one another; it was “a
spiritual, heavenly, ravishing love trance.” It was multi-sensory and involved both the
more general references to sound and sight as well as those of taste and touch that
were common in earlier medieval mystical experiences.^92 Further, it was Trinitarian,
involving the “goodnesse of God” “the very sweetness of Christ” and “the joyes of
the Spirit above measure”. Ambrose recognized the proleptic nature of his experience
and understood it as a “foretaste of heaven” or as he called it a “love-token of Christ
to the Soul”. It clearly created a new awareness and desire in his life than enabled
him to perceive God more fully. Apparently from his description this was the first
time Ambrose had such an experience and that could be one reason for his three-fold
repetition of it. Placing these experiences within the landscape of Christian
spirituality it is significant that these are not the words of Teresa of Avila or Bernard
of Clairvaux or Jan Ruusbroec, but of a moderate seventeenth-century Lancashire
(^91) Williams, “Puritan Enjoyment of God,” 119. On Bernard and spiritual inebriation
see McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, 197, 212, 219. For Puritan examples of spiritual
drunkenness see Sibbes, Glance of Heaven, 169 and Commentary 2 Corinthians, 480
and Rous, 92 Mysticall Marriage, 349.
- For Bernard’s use of the spiritual senses see McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, 185-