I agree that Gill did deny that it is the duty of all who hear the gospel to believe in Christ to the saving of their soul. But that this is the definition of duty-faith, I am not sure. Take a look at the following:

"A Hyper-Calvinist, Gill`s major critics say, does not believe that God calls indiscriminately all who hear about Christ to believe in Him. They say this, holding that man is obliged as a matter of duty to trust in Christ as a condition of salvation. It is odd that this opinion is often closely associated with Gill for several reasons. First, this view applied to Gill is an anachronism as the idea of saving faith being the known duty and within the natural ability of all men reached its fullest expression amongst the Baptists in 1785 with the publication of Andrew Fuller`s controversial book The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. Gill, however, died in 1771 thus obviously having nothing to do with the debate that tore the Baptist churches apart after the book was published. The second reason is that during the earlier part of the 18th century the view of what came to be called ´duty-faith`, formerly propagated by Anglican Latitudinarians such as Tillotson , was gaining ground amongst the Independents but Gill, a staunch Baptist, maintained he did not take part in this debate . Even Andrew Fuller believed that Gill did not enter into the controversy and John Ryland Jnr, quoting Gill`s The Cause of God and Truth, argued that Gill never wrote on the subject of ´the Modern Question ` and exonerates him from taking the usual Hyper-Calvinist stand . John Rippon assumes that Gill did enter the debate in later life because of certain ´corrections` he made to his book The Cause of God and Truth. Rippon, however, does not state what these ´corrections`, are and how they might have applied to the debate in question."
John_Gill_and_Hyper-Calvinism

Gill was an extremely precise theologian, and most puritans who came before him did not use terminology as fined-tuned as he did, so it is easy to misinterpret Gill on certain points. I think it is best to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I was actually reading Jonathan Edwards in "A Treatise on Religious Affections," where he actually points out that it is possible for an "evangelical hypocrite" to have assurance of salvation under the instigation of the devil, and yet remain totally unsaved. According to Edwards, it is a sin for the people to have faith in Christ when they are not in a "gracious estate." Consequently, I agree with Gill that the reprobate must not believe in Christ as their Saviour, since that would be hypocrisy. Unfortunately, there are many evangelicals (especially dispensationalist) today who believe that Christ is their Savior, simply because they have been told that Jesus died for them, and that God simply requires them to "accept" what Jesus did on the cross for them. What God requires from men is that they feel sorrow because of their sins for having broken His law, believe in Christ and repent. However, if they believe in Christ without having experienced sorrow over their sins, their faith is false and sinful.

Gill taught that faith precedes repentance, while some other Reformed theologians argue that repentance precedes faith. Consequently, I think Gill simply distinguished between two types of faith and two types of repentance to highlight which is given by God, and which is required from man. Later, however, this dichotomy was denied by theologians, and that all it was argued that all the types of faith and repentance are required by God. Consequently, they made Gill into a hyper-Calvinist when he never got the chance to defend himself.

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Jean-David Jutras
URCNA
Alberta