loving Jesus. Mary’s experience further indicates that some of these areas of new
knowledge suggest the promissory nature of ravishment.
The second category of assurance of God’s promises also covers a range of
benefits including God’s love, presence, and protection, to the promise that Jesus has
purged a person’s sins and there is assurance of salvation, to a confident peace at the
time of death, to the promise of joy that awaits a person in heaven. Ambrose recounts
his visit to his “dear and Reverend Brother M. Edw. Gee” during the “horrid
temptations” that he faced on “his death-bed”. He writes “at that time of his last
sickness I went to visit him, and I found him as full of spiritual ravishings and
heavenly joyes as (I thought) his heart could hold.”^144 On this occasion ravishment
provided a deep sense of peace and comfort during the final hours that the Puritans
felt were often periods of greatest doubt and onslaught of temptations by the Devil.
However, God frequently provides a deep sense of “the Spirit of Assurance” long
before a person reaches this eschatological stage. In writing about the privilege of
adoption as God’s children, Ambrose proclaims how the “Spirit bears witness with us
in every part, premises, and conclusion; onely it testifies more clearly, certainly,
comfortably, sweetly, ravishing the soul with unspeakable joy, and peace in the
conclusion.”^145 He also uses Bernard as an illustration and then comments that the
use of spiritual duties is “brim full of rare and ravishing comfort.”^146
(^144) Ambrose, War with Devils (^) , 184. cf. (^) Communion with Angels, 283-4 for a similar
deathbed experience involving ravishment that created an assurance of Mr. Holland’s
promise of being in heaven. 145
146 Ambrose, Media (1657), 10.^
Ambrose, Media (1657), 36. Elsewhere Ambrose asserts that ravishment speaks
the word of cMedia, Ultimaomforting assurance to our troubled conscience. (1654), 201. Ultima in Prima,