There is all the difference in the world between the one who signs a confession because he passionately believes it to be an accurate summary of scriptural teaching and the one who signs it because, at a pinch, he can just about make it say what he believes the Bible to teach. The former sees the confession as a place to stand from where he can address both church and world; the latter may at best consider the confession to be an unnecessary appendage and, in time, he might well come to see the confession as a problem, a kind of restrictive cage. Indeed, he might end up asking himself, 'Well, sure, I can just about sign in good conscience - now, what can I get away with saying or doing?' For such a person, the confession is (at best) a union card, merely a necessary prerequisite for working on the shop floor; it is not the lifeblood of his ministry.
[An example from] B. B. Warfield's inaugural lecture as Professor of New Testament at Western (now Pittsburgh) Theological Seminary on Tuesday, April 20, 1880:
I wish to declare that I sign these Standards not as a necessary form which must be submitted to, but gladly and willingly as the expression of a personal and cherished conviction and further that the system taught in these symbols is the system which will be drawn out of the Scriptures in the prosecution of the teaching to which you have called me. Not, indeed, because commencing with that system the Scriptures can be made to teach it, but because commencing with the Scriptures I cannot make them teach anything else.
Warfield's point is simple: he signs the Westminster Standards (and thereby vows to uphold and to teach them) because he sees them as simply summarizing what the Bible teaches. That is true subscription. To use the Latin phrase, Warfield subscribes ex animo. We might translate that 'wholeheartedly' or 'from the depths of his heart.'
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