'The main business that Christ ascended to Heaven about': Henry Hammond on the Ascension and the Comforter

On the Sunday after Ascension Day, many Anglicans will (in one form or another) pray Cranmer's beautiful petition:

We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before ...

In his Sermon VI (from a collection of sermons published in 1675 but preached during the 1640s and 50s), Henry Hammond set forth how the promise of the Comforter was "the main business" of our Lord's Ascension:

The third, and in sum, the powerfullest Argument to prove God's willingness that we should live, is, that he hath bestowed his spirit upon us; that as soon as he called up the Son, he sent the Comforter. This may seem to be the main business that Christ ascended to Heaven about; so that a Man would guess from the xvi Chapter of St. John and Vers. 7. that if it had not been for that, Christ had tarried amongst us till this time; but that it was more expedient to send the Spirit to speak those things powerfully to our hearts, which often and in vain had been sounded in our ears ... Thus hath God dealt with us; first sent his Son, his Incarnate Son, his own Flesh, to feed, and nourish us; and for all this, we die daily: he hath now given us his own very Life, and incorporeous Essence, a piece of pure God, his very Spirit to feed upon, and digest, that if it be possible we might live.

Thus is the Ascension "expedient" for us, that through the gift of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, "we may also in heart and mind thither ascend".

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