Henry Scougal on enjoying God

For Scougal the love of God was first initiated from a realisation about the glory of god, “a delightful and affectionate sense of the divine perfections.” This sense of wonder and enjoyment of God is what “makes the soul resign and sacrifice itself wholly unto him, desiring above all things to please him, and delighting in nothing so much as in fellowship and communion with him, and being ready to do or suffer any thing for his sake, or at his pleasure.”

“As divine love doth advance and elevate the soul, so it is that alone which can make it happy.” This form of divine love is what makes the heart alive and real giving it its greatest happiness. It is this love that “the highest and most ravishing pleasures, the most solid and substantial delights that human nature is capable of.” The reason is that it is the place of where the affections are put that makes the heart soar as much. They “arise from the endearments of a well-placed and successful affection.”

On the contrary “that which embitters love, and makes it ordinarily a very troublesome and hurtful passion, is the placing it on those who have not worth enough to deserve it”. It is the object of love and seeking that does not allow the heart to find satisfaction.

His conclusion is this “to all these evils are they exposed, whose chief and supreme affection is placed on creatures like themselves”. the place of dissatisfaction is found in loving the creature “but the love of God delivers us from them all”. What gives the heart pleasure and rightful satisfaction is when it turns itself in love to that which is the highest and most perfect object God.
This idea has massive implications for how we approach religion. “The exercises of religion, which to others are insipid and tedious, do yield the highest pleasures and delight to souls possessed with divine love.” This is because religion allows the heart to focus on God and therefore is able to find perfection in its direction of love. Therefore “they rejoice when they are called “to go up to the house of the Lord,” that they may “see his power and his glory, as they have formerly seen it in the sanctuary.” They never think themselves so happy, as when, having retired from the world, and gotten free from the noise and hurry of affairs, and silenced all their clamorous passions (those troublesome guests within,) they have placed themselves in the presence of God, and entertain fellowship and communion with him: they delight to adore his perfections, and recount his favours,—and to protest their affection to him, and tell him a thousand times that they love him; to lay their troubles or wants before him, and disburden their hearts in his bosom.”