submit to this ordinance, and yet be destitute of true faith, their baptism should not save them; they should perish for their unbelief : baptized or unbaptized, they should surely perish.
The parts of the text being thus explained, there remains no difficulty in the meaning of the whole as it stands connected together. No words can be found that can more forcibly express the solemn truth, which our Lord intended to convey : the import of his de- claration is so obvious, that we shall not attempt to elucidate it any farther, but will proceed,
II. To vindicate its reasonableness —
That men should be saved for their good works, or condemned for their gross iniquities, would be thought reasonable enough ; but that they should be saved by faith, or condemned for unbelief, seems to many to be utterly unreasonable and absurd. But, to a candid inquirer, the equity and reasonableness of both these points may be easily and plainly evinced.
If faith were, as some imagine it to be, a mere assent to certain propositions, it must be confessed, that, to expect salvation by it were preposterous in the extreme. But it has already been shewn that this is not saving faith. The man who truly believes, invariably comes to Christ in this way ; he confesses with humility and contrition his past offences — -he acknowledges, from his inmost soul, that he deserves the everlasting displeasure of God — he renounces every hope that might arise from his comparative goodness, his penitential sorrows, his future purposes, his actual amendment — he embraces Christ as a suitable and all-sufficient Saviour — and relies simply and entirely upon the promises which God has made to us in the Son of his love. This, I say, is the believer's experience at the first moment he truly believes in Christ. To this we might add, that, from that moment, he lives in a state of communion with his Saviour, and exerts himself to the utmost to adorn his profession by a holy life and conversation : but we intentionally omit all the fruits of faitli which he