Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 25:2 (Summer 2021)
Article: Isaac Ambrose And The Puritan Teaching On Angels
Author: Tom Schwanda

SBJT 25:2 (Summer 2021) p. 85

Isaac Ambrose And The Puritan Teaching On Angels

Tom Schwanda

Tom Schwanda is Associate Professor, emeritus of Christian Formation and Ministry at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. He received his PhD from Durham University and is a fellow in the Royal Historical Society (England). Dr. Schwanda has published widely and contributed numerous book chapters and journal articles on Puritanism and early Evangelicalism. He recently authored, The Emergence of Evangelical Spirituality: The Age of Edwards, Newton, and Whitefield (Paulist Press, 2016). He is currently writing a book on George Whitefield. Tom and his wife, Grace, live in Grand Rapids and have two children and five grandchildren.

In Communion with Angels, Isaac Ambrose prompts his readers with this challenge: “Let us learn to imitate Angels … let us imitate thus, they are as our Guardians, Physicians, Purveyors, Tutors, Instructors, Soldiers, Quickners, Incouragers, Comforters so let us in our several stations and places aspire to Angelical works; if Angels guard us let us be Guardians of one another; … if they tutor us, let us acquaint one another with the mysteries of grace; if they instruct us, and perswade us to our duties, let us so consider one another, to provoke unto love, and to good works … Surely the way to have Angels reward, or to see the face of God, is to do the work of Angels.” Ambrose declares these are the believers’ duties to one another but he is quick to assert that we should also imitate angels in relation to ourselves. He continues, “let us imitate [in] reverence the Majesty of God as they do … stand ready prest to execute the will of God, as they do … Let us study holiness, as they do; they are of a most holy nature, and therefore are called holy Angels. So be we holy, even as they are holy.”1

SBJT 25:2 (Summer 2021) p. 86

This principle of imitating angels was introduced four years earlier in Ambrose’s best-known work, Looking unto Jesus but never in the depth as we read here.2 Isaac Ambrose (1604–1664) was a moderate Puritan divine that spent his entire ministry in Lancashire.3 He identified with the Presbyterian movement and was best known for his meditative piety and his unusual practice of spending the month of May in retreat reviewing his diary and practicing spiritual duties. This quotation reveals the Puritan ministry of angels. Unlike the Roman Catholic teaching, especially during the medieval period, that often was consumed by fanciful speculation Ambrose provides practical encouragement to support believers in their dai...