[NOTE 2]: *State here has respect to the whole person. It may be argued that state is as pertinently applied to the mind or heart as to the whole person; and that when the state of the mind is changed by a belief of God's testimony, the subject of that change is brought into as near a relation to God as he can be in this life; and, as the kingdom of Jesus is a spiritual kingdom, he is as fit for admission into it, and for the enjoyment of its blessings, whenever his heart is changed from enmity to love, as he ever can be: nay, in truth, is actually initiated into the kingdom of Jesus the moment his mind is changed - and that to insist upon any personal act as necessary to admission, because such acts are necessary to admission into all the social and political relations in society, is an overstraining the analogies between things earthly and things heavenly. Not one of our opponents, as far as we remember, has thus argued. We have sometimes thought that they might have thus argued with incomparably more speciosity than appears in any of their objections.

But, without pausing to inquire whether the state of the heart can be love, without an assurance of remission on some ground, or in consequence of some act of the mind prerequisite thereunto; - without being at pains to show that the truth of this proposition is not at all essential to our argument, but only illustrative of it; we may say, that as Christ has redeemed the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, by his obedience even to death - so in coming into his kingdom on earth, and in order to the enjoyment of all the present salvation, the state of the whole person must be changed; and this is what we apprehend Jesus meant by his saying, "Unless a man is born of water and spirit, he can not enter into the Kingdom of God," and what we mean in distinguishing a change of heart, or of views and feelings, from a change of state.