Two Dissertations · §100 · John Davenant

Cap. 6 Arg. 6 close: Obstacle and non-obstacle resolve into bare good pleasure—no promiscuous-grace decree

Finally—lest we pin on the disparity of human wills the fact that these obtained efficacious grace and were converted, while those did not and stay unconverted—he adds in the same place these weighty words: "When God, among people held in the same sins, converts some by going before them, but sustains or permits others to go on according to the order of things, we are not to ask why he converts these and not those. That hangs on his simple will—just as it was by his simple will that, when all things were made from nothing, some were made more worthy than others." So far Thomas. Christ's death, then, established no divine decree that grace should be administered promiscuously to all, with a kind of annexed law that particular persons share or do not share in that grace according as they will or will not raise an impediment. The very distinction between those who raise an obstacle and those who do not must be resolved into God's bare good pleasure as its first and radical cause.

Latin

Demum, ne ad disparitatem voluntatum humanarum referamus, quod hi gratiam efficacem obtinuerint & conversi sint, illi non obtinuerint & conversi maneant, subjungit ibidem & haec verba dignissima, Cum Deus hominum qui in eisdem peccatis detinentur, hos quidem praeveniens convertat, illos autem sustineat sive permittat secundum ordinem rerum procedere, non est ratio inquirenda quare hos convertat, & non illos: hoc enim ex simplici ejus voluntate dependet, sicut ex simplici ejus voluntate processit, quod, quum omnia fierent ex nihilo, quaedam facta sunt aliis digniora. Hactenus Thomas. Christi igitur morte non est stabilitum ullum decretum Divinum de gratia omnibus hominibus promiscue administranda, ea quasi lege annexa, ut singulares personae hujus gratiae participes fiant, aut non participes, prout impedimentum posituri sunt, aut non posituri: sed hoc ipsum discrimen inter ponentes & non ponentes obicem in merum Dei beneplacitum, tanquam in primam & radicalem causam, resolvendum est.

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John Davenant argues from Scripture that Christ's death is a remedy offered to every person, so that anyone who hears the Gospel may be called to believe, and then opens a second dissertation on predestination.

John Davenant (1572–1641) was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, bishop of Salisbury from 1621, and England's leading delegate to the Synod of Dort. A Reformed theologian of the moderate school, he defended universal atonement language within a Calvinist frame.

The Two Dissertations (1650) press two theses: that Christ died sufficiently for all, and that God sincerely calls all who hear the gospel — against the novel claim that Christ died only for the elect in every sense. They are Davenant's mature statement of the hypothetical-universalist position that divided English Calvinists.

This volume covers the opening of the first dissertation through the close of chapter 3, with the theses on the extent of Christ's death.

Date1572–1641 AD (Bishop of Salisbury; 1650 Cambridge imprint)

The 1683 reprint was not used as base text. No modern English was copied.

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