Two Dissertations · §134 · John Davenant

Cap. 7: decree-order digression set aside; thesis aimed at the predestined alone

Nor is it necessary here, for defending this special counsel, to settle that thorny little question—troubling to many, and troubling to all who consider it—whether the decree by which certain persons are predestined haring of eternal life is prior, or that other by which Christ was ordained to the Mediator’s office. For although, to shore up the weakness of human understanding, we are forced in God’s eternal decrees to conceive some as prior and some as posterior, still to contend about these imaginary signs of our reason, or to take from them questions of faith to establish or refute, seems to me slippery and very dangerous. This at least must be set beyond every cast of doubt: those decrees of God which we think according to an order of prior and posterior stand, in God himself, in the equal eternity of infinity; nor can or should any separate instant be given in which, one decree being fixed, the other is rightly thought not yet reviewed and fixed. Conceive then as prior in order the decree of constituting and sending the Mediator (which seems to me fitter to our way of understanding), and as posterior the decree of electing certain persons to the unfrustrated obtaining of eternal life in the Mediator so constituted; yet never so pull these apart that the Mediator’s passion was not from eternity foreseen as to be offered in a special mode and regard for those to be elected, and as specially offered for them was from eternity accepted by God. Or on the contrary, conceive as prior the decree of electing certain persons to salvation, and as posterior the decree of destining Christ to the Mediator’s office; yet never so separate them that Christ’s passion, specially offered and accepted for those same persons, was not the cause of preparing and giving those elect both efficacious grace and salvation. Since therefore either opinion serves our purpose alike, leaving aside a question of little necessity, we will propose and confirm a single thesis on Christ’s death, under a special consideration restricted to the predestined alone. It runs thus:

Latin

Neque hic necessarium est, ad hujus specialis consilii defensionem, spinosam istam quaestiunculam definire a multis vexatam, vexantem omnes qui eam discutiendam susceperunt, Utrum scilicet prius sit Decretum illud quo praedestinantur certae personae ad infallibilem participationem vitae aeternae, an illud alterum quo Christus ordinatus fuit ad officium Mediatorium. Nam quamvis, ad sustentandam intellectus humani imbecillitatem, in aeternis Dei decretis cogimur quaedam ut priora, quaedam ut posteriora concipere, tamen de hisce imaginariis rationis nostrae signis contendere, aut ex iisdem quaestiones fidei stabiliendas aut refellendas suscipere, lubricum mihi videtur, & valde periculosum. Illud siquidem extra omnem dubitationis aleam poni debet, haec, quae a nobis secundum ordinem prioris & posterioris cogitantur, Dei decreta penes ipsum Deum aequabili infinitatis aeternitate consistere: nec dari posse aut debere instans aliquod separatum, in quo, stabilito uno decreto, alterum nondum revisum ac stabilitum recte cogitetur. Concipe igitur ut ordine prius, decretum de constituendo & mittendo Mediatore (quod mihi videtur ad nostrum intelligendi modum aptius) ut posterius, decretum de eligendis certis personis ad infrustrabilem consecutionem vitae aeternae in Mediatore constituto; nunquam tamen haec ita divelles quin passio Mediatoris ab aeterno praevisa fuerit ut offerenda speciali quodam modo, & intuitu pro hisce eligendis, & tanquam oblata pro eisdem specialiter a Deo fuerit, idque ab aeterno, acceptata. E contra, concipe ut ordine prius decretum de electione certarum personarum ad salutem, ut posterius decretum de destinatione Christi ad officium Mediatorium; nunquam tamen haec ita separaveris quin passio Christi, specialiter oblata & acceptata pro iisdem, causa fuerit praeparandi ac donandi illis electis tam gratiam efficacem, quam salutem. Cum igitur utraque opinio perinde se habeat ad institutum nostrum, missa rei minime necessariae disquisitione, unicam thesin de morte Christi, sub speciali quadam consideratione ad solos praedestinatos restricta, proponemus & confirmabimus: Quae sic se habet,

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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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