5. * Faith therefore is the _necessary_ condition of justification. Yea, and the _only necessary_ condition thereof. This is the second point carefully to be observed; that the very moment God giveth faith (_for it is the gift of God_) to the _ungodly, that worketh not_, that _faith is counted to him for righteousness_. He hath no righteousness at all, antecedent to this, not so much as negative righteousness or innocence. But _faith is imputed to him for righteousness_, the very moment that he believeth. Not that God (as was observed before) thinketh him to be what he is not. But as _he made Christ to be sin for us, that_ is, treated him as a sinner, punishing him for our sins, so he counteth us righteous, from the time we believe in him: that is, he doth not punish us for our sins, yea, treats us as tho’ we were guiltless and righteous. 6. Surely the difficulty of assenting to this proposition, that faith is the _only condition_ of justification, must arise from not understanding it. We mean thereby thus much, that it is the only thing without which none is justified; the only thing that is immediately, indispensably, absolutely requisite in order to pardon. As on the one hand, tho’ a man should have every thing else, without faith, yet he cannot be justified; so on the other, tho’ he be supposed to want every thing else, yet if he hath faith, he cannot but be justified. For suppose a sinner of any kind or degree, in a full sense of his total ungodliness, of his utter inability to think, speak or do good, and his absolute meetness for hell-fire: suppose, I say, this sinner, helpless and hopeless, casts himself wholly on the mercy of God in Christ (which indeed he cannot do but by the grace of God) who can doubt, but he is forgiven in that moment? Who will affirm, that any more is _indispensably required_, before that sinner can be justified? Now if there ever was one such instance from the beginning of the world. (And have there not been, and are there not ten thousand times ten thousand?) it plainly follows, that faith is, in the above sense, the sole condition of justification.