Henry Scougal on Love, Hatred, and Disagreement

Source: Works of the Rev. Henry Scougal
(1650–1678).

We come next to the enemies of our religion; and indeed there are many who are so far from thinking them to be among the number of those whom they are obliged to love, that they look upon it as a part of their duty to hate and malign them. Their zeal is continually venting itself in fierce invectives against Antichrist, and everything they are pleased to call Antichristian; and they are ready to apply all the prophecies and imprecations of the Old Testament, in their very prayers, against those that differ from them. And ordinarily the animosities are greatest where the differences are least, and one party of a reformed church shall be more incensed against another, than either against the superstition and tyranny of Rome, or the carnality of the Mahometan faith. Yea, perhaps you may find some who agree in opinion, and only differ in several ways of expressing the same thing, and yet can scarce look on one another without displeasure and aversion. But, alas! how much do these men disparage that religion for which they appear so zealous, how much do they mistake the spirit of Christianity!

Are the persons whom they hate, greater enemies to religion, than those who persecuted the Apostles and martyrs for professing it? And yet these were the persons whom our Saviour commanded his disciples to love: and himself did pray for those that crucified him; and severely checked the disciples, when, by a precedent brought from the Old Testament, they would have called for fire from heaven on those who would not receive them ; telling them, They knew not what spirit they were of: i. e. They did not consider by what spirit they were prompted to such cruel inclinations; or, as others explain it, they did not yet sufficiently understand the temper and genius of Christianity; which is pure and peaceable, gentle and meek: full of sweetness, and full of love. If men would impartially examine their hatred and animosity against the enemies of their religion, I fear they would find them proceed from a principle which themselves would not willingly own. 

Pride and self-conceit will make a man disdain those of a different persuasion, and think it a disparagement. We may to his judgment, that any should differ from it. Mere nature and self-love will make a man hate those who oppose the interest and advancement of that party which himself has espoused. Hence men are many times more displeased at some small mistakes in judgment, than the greatest immoralities in practice; yea, perhaps, they will find a secret pleasure, and wicked satisfaction, in hearing or reporting the faults or scandal of their adversaries. Certainly the power of religion rightly prevailing in the soul, would mould us into another temper: it would teach us to love and pity, and pray for the person, as well as hate and condemn the errors they are supposed to espouse: it would make us wish their conversion rather than their confusion; and be more desirous that God would fit them for another world, than that he would take them out of this. indeed wish the disappointment of their wicked purposes; for this is charity to them, to keep them from being the unhappy instruments of mischief in the world: but he that can wish plagues and ruin to their persons, and delights in their sins, or in their misery, hath more of the devil than the Christian.

 ~ Henry Scougal, “The Indispensable Duty of Loving our Enemies,” in Works of the Rev. Henry Scougal, 143-144.