The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal

creation, that angels and men would conquer with it the
admiration and love of those infinite perfections.
Again, Love is accompanied with trouble, when it misses
a suitable return of affection. Love is the most valuable
thing we can bestow, and by giving it, we do, in effect,
give all that we have; and therefore it must needs be
afflicting to find so great a gift despised, that the
present which one hath made of his whole heart, cannot
prevail to obtain any return. Perfect love is a kind of
self-dereliction, a wandering out of ourselves; it is a
kind of voluntary death, wherein the lover dies to
himself, and all his own interests, nor thinking of them,
nor caring for them any more, and minding nothing but
how he may please and gratify the party whom he loves.
Thus he is quite undone, unless he meets with reciprocal
affection; he neglects himself, and the other hath no
regard to him: but if he be beloved, he is revived, as it
were, and liveth in the soul and care of the person whom
he loves; and now he begins to mind his own
concernments, not so much because they are his, as
because the beloved is pleased to own an interest in
them: he becomes dear unto himself, because he is so
unto the other.
But why should I enlarge in so known a matter? Nothing
can be more clear than that the happiness of love
depends on the return it meets with: and herein the
43 of 102