Status Updates From Theoretical-Practical Theol...

“The Reformed, although they willingly admit thought, indeed thoughts, in God, and also grant that they entirely coincide with the divine essence, since through the omnimodal simplicity of God they recognize nothing in God different from the divine essence, notwithstanding deny that the divine essence is mere thought.” … then distinguishes identical vs formal senses of God’s “thought” in scholasticism

William Ames -

"The formally quidditative concept of God ought to be as it were the ultimate reckoning, one that fulfills his nature, as it were in the most perfect species of being; but we have no more perfect concept than that of a Spirit living from himself." (Marrow of Theology, bk. 1, ch. 4, § 33)

knowledge of God that must be cared for, it does not rest in some sort of common knowledge, by which it knows "that God exists, or it knows only theoretically, superficially, frigidly, and lazily, but it strives toward a knowledge that is experiential, living, and deep, a knowledge that impels it to
"seek God," to "come to God," to "please him," that he might be experienced as a
"rewarder”.

“it rejoices in the requirements and qualities of saving knowledge, such as (a) that it is experiential, not derived by hearing alone, or the reading of books, or the revelation of another, intruding into things which it has not seen (Col. 2:18), but by the very sense of experience, and as it were, by sight (Ps. 34:8; 1 Peter 2:3), that is, in knowledge and all discernment (Phil. 1:9).”

Slippery conversations concerning God, his providence, and the immortality of our soul, among which is the well-known quodlibetal disputation held before Leo X, where between two men one proved with all reasons that God exists and the other denied it, and the pope at last pronounced to the former, "Indeed, your opinion is the truer one" and to the latter, "but yours makes for a merrier face."

The All-Sufficiency and Perfection of God - a great chapter to inflame the heart before worship.