Two Dissertations · §105 · John Davenant

Cap. 6 Arg. 7 close: After Christ, who has applying grace turns on divine good pleasure, not human disparity

So after Christ has been given us, the distinction that some have the grace by which they apply Christ to themselves for salvation, and others do not, is brought back not to the unevenness of human wills, but to the good pleasure of the divine will.

Latin

Ergo post datum nobis Christum, non ad disparitatem humanarum voluntatum, sed ad beneplacitum Divinae voluntatis reducitur hoc discrimen, quod aliqui habeant eam gratiam qua Christum sibi applicant ad salutem, alii non habeant.

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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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