Two Dissertations · §102 · John Davenant

Cap. 6 Arg. 7: Remonstrants—saving efficacy hangs on not opposing, not on omnipotent force

So the Remonstrants put it in the Declaration of their view on the third article (Acts of the Synod of Dordrecht, p. 15). Saving efficacy of grace, they say, hangs neither on the fitness of the calling (as some Roman writers hold) nor on omnipotent divine force (as Prosper in the Carmen De Ingratis 14-15, and Augustine Against Julian 5.3, On the Predestination of the Saints 2, On Grace and Free Choice 20, and On Rebuke and Grace 14), but on an operation that most surely gets its effect when a person does not set rebellion against it—rebellion he could of himself have set.

Latin

Sic Remonstrantes, in Declaratione sententiae suae circa articulum tertium, Act. Synod. Dordrecht. pag. 15. Gratiae efficacitatem salutiferam pendere dicunt neque a congruitate vocationis (ut quidam Pontificii) neque ab omnipotente vi Divina, (ut Prosper, Carm. De Ingr. cap. 14. & 15. & Augustinus, Contra Julian. lib. 5. cap. 3. De praed. Sanct. cap. 2. De grat. & lib. arbit. cap. 20. & De corrept. & grat. cap. 14.) sed a tali operatione quae suum effectum certissime sortitur, cum rebellionem homo non opponit, quam ex se opponere potuisset.

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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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