Isaac Ambrose wrote:
The most excellent subject to discourse or write of is Jesus Christ. Augustine, having read Cicero's works, commended them for their eloquence; but he passed this sentence upon them: "They are not sweet because the name of Jesus is not in them." And Bernard's saying is near the same: "If thou writest, it doth not relish with me, unless I read Jesus there; if thou disputest or conferrest, it doth not relish well with me, unless Jesus [is found] there." Indeed all we say is but unsavory, if it is not seasoned with this salt: "I determined not to know any thing among you," saith Paul, "save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (1Co 2:2). He resolved with himself before he preached among the Corinthians that this should be the only point of knowledge that he would profess himself to have skill in, and that, in the course of his ministry, he would labor to bring them to. This he made "the breadth, and length, and depth, and height" of his knowledge (Eph 3:18). "Yea, doubtless," saith he, "and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phi 3:8).
In this knowledge of Christ, there is an excellence above all other knowledge in the world. There is nothing more pleasing and comfortable, more animating and enlivening, more ravishing and soul contenting. Only Christ is the sun and center of all divinely revealed truths. We can preach nothing else as the object of our faith, as the necessary element of your soul’s salvation, which doth not some way or other either meet in Christ or refer to Christ. Only Christ is the whole of man's happiness: the Sun to enlighten him, the Physician to heal him, the Wall of fire to defend him, the Friend to comfort him, the Pearl to enrich him, the Ark to support him, the Rock to sustain him under the heaviest pressures, as "an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land" (Isa 32:2). Only Christ is that between earth and heaven, the Mediator between God and man (1Ti 2:5), a mystery, which the angels of heaven desire to pry, peep, and look into (1Pe 1:12) . . . we see that man is blind, and no sun but Christ can enlighten him; that man is naked, and no garment but Christ's can clothe him; that man is poor, and no treasure but Christ's can enrich him; that man is indebted, and none but Christ can make satisfaction for him; that man is empty, and none but Christ can fill him; that man is distressed, perplexed, tormented and none but Christ can quiet him. All this, and much more than this appears in the this glass of Jesus.
