A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

Fifthly, In that Christ hath appointed Sacraments in the Church, which §Vamong other ends are to quicken up and excite our memory; it is plain, that they are polluted, that we are prone to forget all the benefits of God, though never so precious; Sacraments have for their generical nature a sign; They are signs, and that not only obsignatives and in some sense exhibitive, but also commemorative; hence in the very Institution of the Lords-Supper, we have this injunction, Do this in remembrance of me, 1 Cor. 11. 24. Not that the commemoration of Christs death with thankfulness and joy, is the total and adequate ⟨p. 256⟩end of the Lords-Supper, as the Socinians affirm, making us to receive no new special influences of Gods grace thereby upon our souls, or any renewed exhibitive Communion of Christ with his benefits to us, but merely a commemoration, of what benefit is past: As (say they) the Israelites, when they celebrated that public mercy of deliverance out of Egypt, had not thereby a new deliverance, but only there was a celebration of the old: Thus they would have it in the Sacrament of the Lords-Supper. But the principal and chief end of the Lords-Supper, is to convey further degrees of grace and comfort to the true receivers, yet we acknowledge it also a special and great end in the Sacrament to be commemorative, and that Christ hereby would have our memories quickened about that infinite love showed to us in dying for us, Now what can be more demonstrating the naughtiness and sinfulness of the memory then this very thing? For, who would not think that Christs voluntary giving up of himself to such an accursed and ignominious death for us, would always be in our minds? Such signal and transcendent expressions of love would be with us rising, and waking, and going to bed, That though the Devil and the world did never so importunately crowd in with their suggestions, yet this should always be uppermost in our hearts and affections; but Christ by this very institution, doth hereby manifest, what dull and stupid memories we have, and that about the greatest mercies that we are capable of: Would it not be strange if a malefactor should forget his pardon, or Rahab forget the scarlet thread in the window, that was to be the preservative of her life? yet our forgetfulness is greater, when we do not remember our Saviour, and his sufferings for us.