"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 interest, not 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. "
- Henry Scougal in 'The Life of God in the Soul of Man'
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