Isaac Ambrose (1604 - 1663/1664) was an English Puritan pastor and theologian. The full title of this long-beloved work was "Looking Unto Jesus: The Soul's Eyeing of Jesus as Carrying on the Great Work of Man's Salvation." Its focus on Christ provides a refreshing contrast to some of the more introspective works of other Puritans.
"Christ alone is the treasury, storehouse, magazine, of the free goodness and mercy of the Godhead," Ambrose exclaims. "In him we are justified, sanctified, saved. He is the way, the truth, and the life; he is honour, riches, beauty, health, peace, and salvation; all the spiritual blessings wherewith we are enriched, are in and by Christ: God hears our prayers by Christ; God forgives our iniquities through Christ; all we have, and all we expect to have, hangs only on Christ; he is the golden hinge, upon which all our salvation turns."
Isaac Ambrose was born in 1604, the son of Richard Ambrose, vicar of Ormskirk, Lancashire. Entering Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1621, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1624, and was ordained to the ministry. He became vicar of the parish church in Castleton, Derbyshire, in 1627, then served at Clapham, Yorkshire, from 1629 to 1631. The following year he received a Master of Arts degree from Cambridge.
Through the influence of William Russell, Earl of Bedford, Ambrose was appointed one of the king's four itinerant preachers for Lancashire, and took up residence in Garstang, a Lancashire town between Preston and Lancaster. The king's preachers were commissioned to preach the Reformation doctrines in an area that was strongly entrenched in Roman Catholicism.
Many who have no love for Puritan doctrine, nor sympathy with Puritan experience, have appreciated the pathos and beauty of his writings, and his Looking unto Jesus long held its own in popular appreciation with the writings of John Bunyan.
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