4. The first and immediate duty of the sinner is to submit to the right- eousness of God ; to renounce all dependence on his own merit, and cor- dially to embrace the offers of reconciliation proposed in the gospel, V. 3.
5. Unbelief, or the refusal to submit to God's plan of salvation, is the immediate ground of the condemnation or rejection of those who perish under the sound of the gospel, v. 3.
6. Christ is every thing in the religion of the true believer. He ful- fils, and by fulfilling abolishes, the law, by whose demands the sinner was weighed down in despair ; and his merit secures the justification of every one that confides in him, v. 4.
7. Christ is the end of the law, whether moral or ceremonial. To hiir both, as a schoolmaster, lead. In him all their demands are satisfied, 8ii J all their types and shadows are answered, v. 4.
8. The legal method of justification is, for sinners, as impracticable as climbing up into heaven or going down into the abyss, vs. 5 — 7.
9. The demands of the gospel are both simple and intelligible. The sincere acceptance of the proffered righteousness of God and the open acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as Lord, vs. 6 — 9.
10. The public profession of religion or confession of Christ is an in- dispensable duty. That is, in order to salvation, we must not only secretly believe, but also openly acknowledge that Jesus is our prophet, priest, and king. Though faith and confession are both necessary, they are not necessary on the same grounds, nor to the same degree. The former is necessary as a means to an end, as without faith we can have no part in the justifying righteousness of Christ ; the latter as a duty, the performance of which circumstances may render impracticable. In like manner Christ declares baptism, as the appointed means of confession, to be necessary, Mark 16 : 16 ; not, however, as a sine qua non, but as a command, the obligation of which providential dispensations may remove, . as in the case of the thief on the cross, v. 9.
11. Faith is not the mere assent of the mind to the truth of certain propositions. It is a cordial persuasion of the truth, founded on the ex- perience of its power or the spiritual preception of its nature, and on the divine testimony. Faith is, therefore, a moral exercise. Men believe with the heart, in the ordinary scriptural meaning of that word. And no faith, which does not proceed from the heart, is connected with justifica- tion, V. 10.