In this excellent work on spiritual warfare, Ambrose handles three doctrines: 1) All God's people must be warriors. 2) We have powerful and malicious enemies to contend with. 3) We must wrestle and strive against these enemies. Ambrose shows how Satan attacks the Christian at different times and under different conditions in our lives, and how we can be ready to withstand his assaults. Based on Ephesians 6:12, Ambrose addresses how a Christian is to do spiritual battle against sin, Satan, the world, and the flesh. This work is particularly useful in that he highlights the unique temptations of the various stages of a person's life.
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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