Two Dissertations · §158 · John Davenant

Cap. 7 Rat. 10: without absolute elect-saving will grace no better prepared than in Adam

Ratio 10. If Christ did not offer himself to the Father with a peculiar absolute will to redeem and save the elect efficaciously by his death's merit, then efficacious grace and eternal life would be prepared or given to no one in Christ on any better footing than they were in Adam. The first Adam already gave the race the chance of grace and eternal life under a condition that hangs on our free choice.

Latin

Rat. 10. Si Christus non obtulerit seipsum Deo Patri cum peculiari quadam, & absoluta voluntate redimendi & efficaciter salvandi electos merito mortis suae; tum gratia efficax & vita aeterna non aliter praeparata esset, aut donata ullis hominibus in Christo, quam fuit in Adamo. Possibilitas enim habendi gratiam & vitam aeternam sub conditione ex libero arbitrio nostro pendente, in primo Adamo fuit concessa humano generi.

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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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