the first to engage in this as McGinn’s summary indicates, the “fundamental aim of
monastic spirituality was not so much to strive to enjoy what later ages would call
mystical experience here below as to encourage contemplatio understood as burning
desire for heaven.”^94 However, while earlier Christians, including Bernard, desired
heaven there does not appear to be the same degree of emphasis upon meditating on
heaven as practiced by Calvin and the Puritans.^95 Dewey Wallace reports,
“[h]eavenly mindedness was the spiritual person’s foretaste of the joys of heaven
through meditation.”^96 Further, he maintains, ”Puritan spirituality became most
affectively mystical with regard to such topics as heavenly mindedness and union
with Christ.”^97 Likewise Lovelace maintains “Puritan ‘heavenly-mindedness,’ despite
modern jests to the contrary, was a practical mysticism that sought communion with
God among the common events of daily living.”^98 Moreover, Peter Toon suggests
that “meditation on heaven” was the most important theme in Puritan meditation. He
suggests three reasons for the importance of meditating on heaven:
First, because Christ is there now and our salvation consists of union through the Holy Spirit with him.... Second, we are pilgrims and sojourners on earth,
journeying in faith, hope, and love toward heaven in order to be with Christ
there. Heaven is the goal of our pilgrimage. And third, because we can
rightly live a Christian life in the present evil age only if we have the mind of
Christ, that is, if we are genuinely heavenly minded, seeing our earth and this
age in the perspective of heaven.^99
What is significant for this study on Isaac Ambrose is that Dewey Wallace regards
heavenly-mindedness as a more prominent theme following the Act of Uniformity in
(^94) McGinn, Growth of Mysticism (^) , 140.
(^95) For Bernard’s desire for heaven see Casey, Athirst for God, 208-31. cf. Leclercq,
Love of Learning and Desire for God 96 , 56-70.
97 Dewey Wallace, Spirituality of Later Puritans, xvii.^
98 Dewey Wallace, Spirituality of Later Puritans. xviii.^
99 Lovelace, Toon, From Mind to HeartAmerican Pietism of Cotton Mather, 95-6. , 187.^