Two Dissertations · §160 · John Davenant

Cap. 7 Rat. 10: Adam parity contradicts Scripture’s sure purpose of good pleasure

But that clashes with Scripture. Scripture hangs the grace and eternal life prepared and to be given in Christ to all who will be saved on God's sure purpose of good pleasure, not on a contingent turn of human choice. The treatise on Election and Passing-by will show this.

Latin

At hoc repugnat sacrae Scripturae, quae gratiam & vitam aeternam in Christo omnibus salvandis praeparatam & donandam suspendit ex certo proposito beneplaciti Divini, non ex contingente motu arbitrii humani; quod in controversia De Electione & Praeteritione ostendetur.

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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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