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There is a lot that Lutherans and Reformed folk have in common and there are things that seriously divide us (otherwise Lutherans would be Calvinists). Just as in Lutheranism, the Reformed Faith is defined by what these respective Churches profess. For Lutherans it is the Book of Concord, for the Reformed its the Westminster Standards or the 3FU. Men such as Hodge, Calvin, Luther, Edwards, etc. were some of the greatest teachers God has graced his church with but they are not the church. It is the church that establishes what the church professes, not any particular theologian.
A memorialist view of the sacraments is common in the broad evangelical church but for the confessionally reformed this is not the view as defined by our confessions. As I noted in my previous post, yes the sacraments are a means of grace but not for salvation but for the bolstering up of ones faith. Yes we can look back to our baptism and look to improve upon it, but is it a means of assurance? not really. Simon Magus was also baptized.
As Chapter 18 of the WCF notes:
This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance of faith founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God, which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption.
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