Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

1. By a forgetfulness of his Benefits. We enjoy the Mercies, and forget the Donor; we take what he gives, and pay not the Tribute he deserves; The Israelites forgot God their Saviour, which had done great things in Egypt^*. We send Gods Mercies, where we would have God send our Sins, into the Land of forgetfulness, and write his Benefits, where himself will write the Names of the Wicked, in the Dust, which every Wind defaceth: The remembrance soon wears out of our Minds, and we are so far from remembering what we had before, that we scarce think of that Hand that gives, the very instant wherein his Benefits drop upon us. Adam basely forgot his Benefactor, presently after he had been made capable to remember him, and reflect upon him; the first remark we hear of him, is of his forgetfulness, not a syllable ⟨p. 663⟩of his thankfulness. We forget those Souls he hath lodged in us, to acknowledge his favours to our Bodies; we forget that Image wherewith he beautified us; and that Christ he exposed as a Criminal to Death for our Rescue, which is such an act of Goodness as cannot be expressed by the Eloquence of the Tongue, or conceived by the acuteness of the Mind. Those things which are so common, that they cannot be invisible to our Eyes, are unregarded by our Minds; our Sense prompts our Understanding, and our Understanding is deaf to the plain dictates of our Sense. We forget his Goodness in the Sun, while it warms us, and his Showers while they enrich us; in the Corn while it nourisheth us, and the Wine while it refresheth us;^* She did not know that I gave her Corn, and Wine, and Oil: She that might have read my Hand in every bit of Bread, and every drop of Drink, did not consider this. 'Tis an injustice to forget the benefits we receive from Man; 'tis a Crime of a higher Nature to forget those dispensed to us by the hand of God, who gives us those things that all the World cannot furnish us with, without him. The Inhabitants of Troas will condemn us, who worshipped Mice, in a grateful remembrance of the Victory they had made easy for them, by gnawing their Enemies Bow-strings. They were mindful of the Courtesy of Animals, though unintended by those Creatures; and we are regardless of the fore-meditated Bounty of God. 'Tis in Gods Judgment a brutishness beyond that of a stupid Ox, or a duller Ass;