"First, I say, love must needs be miserable and full of trouble and disquietude, when there is not worth and excellency enough in the object to answer the vastness of its capacity: so eager and violent a passion can not but fret and torment the spirit, when it finds not wherewith to satisfy its cravings: and, indeed, so large and unbounded is its nature, that it must be extremely pinched and straitened, when confined to any creature: nothing below an infinite good can afford it room to stretch itself, and exert its vigor and activity. What is a little skin-deep beauty, or some small degrees of goodness, to match or satisfy a passion which was made for God; designed to embrace an infinite God? No wonder lovers do so hardly suffer any rival, and do not desire that others should approve their passions by imitating it: they know the scantiness and narrowness of the good which they love, that it cannot suffice two, being in effect too little for one. Hence love, 'which is strong as death', occasioneth 'jealousy, which is cruel as the grave'; the coals whereof are coals of fire which hath a most violent flame."
"But divine love hath no mixture of this gall; when once the soul is fixed on that supreme and all-sufficent good, it finds so much perfection and goodness as doth not only answer and satisfy its affections, but master and overpower it too: it finds all its love to be too faint and languid for such a noble object, and is only sorry that it can command no more. It wisheth for the flames of a seraph, and longs for the time when it shall be wholly melted and dissolved into love: and because it can do so little itself, it desires the assistance of the whole creation, that angels and men would concur with it in the admiration and love of those infinite perfections." (Scougal, Henry. The Life of God in the Soul of Man. pp 74-75)
Side note:
I wish we talked and wrote like this now.
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