Two Dissertations · §141 · John Davenant

Cap. 7 Arg. 3 Probatur 1: sheep/members by eternal election—Augustine Tract. 46 / 49

First, then: in those places the speech is of sheep, members, and children taken according to God's eternal and hidden purpose of election, not according to what they are in the present act. Nobody becomes Christ's sheep in fact, or a child of God, or a member of his mystical body, unless the merit and benefit of Christ's death are actually and efficaciously brought down and applied to him. So Christ died for the sheep, for the children of God, for the Church, for the members destined to him from eternity under the purpose of election—so that by the merit of his death God's predestination might be fulfilled in them. Augustine puts it so on John, tract. 46: "The Lord knows who are his; they are sheep according to that predestination, that foreknowledge, that election of sheep, before the world was founded." And in tract. 49, p. 366, on the scattered children of God: "These things were spoken according to predestination; for neither his sheep nor the children of God yet existed, because they had not yet believed."

Latin

Probatur primum, nempe, Sermonem esse in praedictis locis de ovibus, de membris, de filiis secundum aeternum & arcanum propositum electionis Divinae, & non secundum actum praesentem consideratis; Quia nemo fit actualiter ovis Christi, filius Dei, membrum corporis mystici, nisi merito & beneficio mortis Christi ad eum actualiter & efficaciter derivatae & applicatae. Christus igitur mortuus est pro ovibus, pro filiis Dei, pro Ecclesia, pro membris sibi secundum electionis propositum ab aeterno destinatis, scilicet ut merito mortis Christi haec praedestinatio Dei impleretur in iisdem. Sic Augustinus, in Johann. tract. 46. Novit Dominus qui sunt ejus: ipsi sunt oves, secundum istam praedestinationem, secundum istam praescientiam, secundum istam electionem ovium, ante constitutionem mundi. Et Tract. 49. pag. 366. de filiis Dei dispersis sic loquitur, Haec secundum praedestinationem dicta sunt: Nam neque oves ejus neque filii Dei adhuc erant, quia nondum crediderant.

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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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