next step to encourage this new birth is “an hungering desire after Christ and his
merits.”^150 He reiterates this again in Looking Unto Jesus, when he declares, “[a]
sight of Christ in his beauty and glory would ravish souls, and draw them to run after
him.”^151 Earlier in the same work Ambrose asserts the expanding and transformative
nature of “spiritual desires after Christ, [that they] do neither load, nor cloy the heart,
but rather open, and enlarge it for more and more.”^152 Clearly for Ambrose
ravishment created a growing desire to yearn for deeper intimacy with God and
reciprocally this desire also prepared him and others for being ravished by God. It is
also evident that any aspect of Jesus’ presence whether his beauty or spiritual duties
to engage with him or his promises had the potential to stir up and enlarge his desires
after God. In fact, the mere thought of reflecting on Jesus was enough to ravish
Ambrose’s soul. He confesses his inability to love Jesus properly, “[h]ad I a thousand
hearts to bestow on Christ, they were all too little, they were never able to love him
sufficiently.”^153 Further, Ambrose declares, “[t]here is a twofold love, one of desire,
which is an earnest longing after that which we believe would do us much good, if we
could attain to it; another of complacency, when having attained that which we desire,
we hugge and embrace it, and solace our selves in the fruition of it.”^ The first love,
which Ambrose also calls an “affectionate longing or thirsty love” is the love that has
been examined.^154 The second love that matures into fruition leads to the final benefit
of ravishment that is delight and enjoyment of God.
(^150) Ambrose, Prima (^) in Prima, Media, Ultima (^) (1654), 34-5.
(^151) Ambrose, Looking Unto Jesus, 792-3.
(^152) Ambrose, Looking Unto Jesus, 321.
(^153154) Ambrose, Media (1657), 229.
Ambrose, Media (1657), 224