as Bloesch. In a like manner, there is a more positive trajectory of retrieval
embracing a contemplative piety extending back to the seventeenth-century,
connecting through Bavinck and extending to the contemporary Church. The
parallels between the Nadere Reformatie and English Puritanism have already been
mentioned and significantly they embraced the writings of Ambrose very early in
their history. Prima, Media, Ultima was Ambrose’s first work to be translated into
Dutch in 1660.^200 The first Dutch translation of Looking Unto Jesus appeared in
1664.^201 The works of Puritanism experienced a revival of interest in mid-nineteenth-
century Holland and no less than four editions of Looking Unto Jesus were published
in twenty-four years.^202 The second half of the twentieth- century witnessed another
revival of interest in the writings of Ambrose. This time seven editions of Looking
Unto Jesus were published.^203 Willem op’t Hof, an expert in Dutch Pietism and
Puritanism, remarks that Lewis Bayly’s The Practice of Piety was the number one
bestseller among pietistic literature in the seventeenth-century with forty eight
editions to only four to Ambrose’s Looking Unto Jesus. However, “the appreciation
of Ambrose as an edifying writer is still alive [today in contrast to that of Bayly] and
perhaps more lively than ever.” Op’t Hof identifies Ambrose’s eclipse of Bayly and
contemporary popularity as due to his “reformed, experimental, mystical and
especially christocentric character.”^204 This popularity of Ambrose’s Looking Unto
Jesus makes it likely to be found in most “families of the experimental reformed”
tradition.^205 Interestingly, most of the publications of Ambrose’s works originated in
(^200) Schoneveld, Intertraffic of the Mind (^) , 137 and Van Der Haar, From Abbadie to
Young 201 , 3.
202 Van Der Haar, From Abbadie to Young, 2.^
203 Op’t Hof, “Dutch Reception of Ambrose,” 6-7.^
204 Op’t Hof, “Dutch Reception of Ambrose,” 7.^
205 Op’t Hof, “Dutch Reception of Ambrose,” 10. Op’t Hof, “Dutch Reception of Ambrose,” 8.