Determination of mercy: only in the Son; by repentance and faith; by the light of Word and Spirit
The determination of the grace of mercy is that by which God, through His wisdom and justice, so limits, measures, and orders it that He receives the sinful human into His friendship, absolves from sin, and gifts with eternal life — not without Christ His Son or outside Him, nor without repentance and faith, but by requiring this in accordance with His justice and promising life through Christ, and by grace bestowing both.
Three things therefore restrain and limit the universal philanthropy by divine wisdom and justice. First: God loved the world stained by sin, yet not so as to love it without the Son or outside the Son, or to remit sins and bless it without satisfaction and expiation, but only in the Son and through the Son, whom He gave as mediator and propitiator.
Second: after God gave His Son for reconciliation, He so loved the world in Him and reconciled it to Himself through Him that remission of sins is not obtained without repentance and faith.
Third: by the force of that new covenant of grace in Christ God so loved the world that He not only, according to His justice, exacted obedience and promised life as in the old covenant of the law, but also by His grace wills to work and bestow both what the gospel demands — the obedience of faith — and what it promises — the most certain consolation of remission of all sins and of eternal life; yet not by bare omnipotence and mere miracles, or by forcing humans as it were violently to faith, but by the light of Word and Spirit in the gospel.
Latin
Determinatio gratiae miserationis est, qua Deus eam per sapientiam & iustitiam suam ita limitat, emetitur & ordinat, ut hominem peccatorem non sine Christo Filio suo aut extra eum, neque sine poenitentia & fide, sed hanc secundum iustitiam suam postulando & vitam in Christo promittendo, per gratiam vero utramque largiendo, in amicitiam suam recipiat, a peccato absolvat & vita aeterna donet. Tria igitur sunt, quibus divina sapientia & iustitia philanthropiam universalem restringit ac limitat. 1. Deus quidem dilexit mundum peccato inquinatum, non tamen ita ut sine Filio aut extra Filium diligat, aut sine satisfactione & expiatione peccata ei remittat & eum beet, sed tantum in Filio & per Filium, quem dedit in mediatorem & propitiatorem. 2. Posteaquam Deus Filium suum dedit in reconciliationem, mundum ita in eo dilexit atque hoc pacto per eum sibi reconciliavit, ut non sine poenitentia & fide peccatorum remissionem consequeretur. 3. Deus mundum vi novi illius foederis gratiae in Christo ita dilexit, ut non solum secundum iustitiam suam obedientiam exegerit & vitam promiserit, sicut in veteri foedere legis: verum etiam per gratiam suam, tum illud quod in Euangelio postulat, nempe obedientiam fidei, tum quod in eo promittit, nempe certissimam consolationem remissionis omnium peccatorum & vitae aeternae, efficaciter operari & largiri velit — ita tamen, ut fidem non per nudam omnipotentiam suam & mera miracula in hominibus operetur, aut eos quasi violenter ad fidem cogat, sed per lumen verbi & Spiritus eius in Euangelio.