Two Dissertations · §106 · John Davenant

Cap. 6 Arg. 8 open: Fathers testify that God withholds media and gifts by good pleasure

Our last argument comes from the Fathers themselves. They freely grant that some people are not given the means and gifts by which they can believe in Christ and obtain salvation—and that this denial rests on the good pleasure of the divine will. God would never leave that undone if, once Christ's death is granted, divine goodness, prudence, or justice already required those means to be supplied to every person. We will not parade every Father in turn. We will take a few passages from those who fought the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians.

Latin

Postremum nostrum argumentum petetur a testimoniis Patrum, qui ultro fatentur, quibusdam hominibus, idque ex beneplacito Divinae voluntatis, non dari ea media ac dona quibus in Christum credere et salutem obtinere queant: quod Deus nunquam facere praetermitteret, si posita Christi morte, ratio bonitatis, prudentiae aut justitiae Divinae id exigeret omnibus et singulis jam suppeditari. Neque Patres singulos percurremus, sed ex iis paucula testimonia excerpemus, quibus cum Pelagianis et Semipelagianis negotium fuit.

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About this text

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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