Two Dissertations · §164 · John Davenant

Cap. 7 Rat. 11 close: Prosper/Hilary/Augustine/Fulgentius on special saving purpose

That it is Pelagian to shift the fruit of Christ’s death—eternal life—from God’s special intention to a special act of free choice is plain from Prosper’s Letter to Augustine. Hilary’s Letter to Augustine shows the same: the Pelagian remnants treat eternal life in Christ’s death as so set before all that they flatly deny any singular purpose of God to save the elect by that death, and put the whole divide between the saved and the unsaved down to human wills. Against them, the orthodox saw a special hidden purpose in God accepting Christ’s death-sacrifice and in Christ offering it—toward efficacious fruitful application to certain persons. That is clear from Augustine’s On the Predestination of the Saints, On the Good of Perseverance, and his other anti-Pelagian and anti-Semipelagian books, where the special will to save the elect through Christ is if not the only then the chief conclusion. Prosper and Fulgentius say the same throughout: efficacious obtaining of salvation in Christ comes from God’s efficacious special will designating Christ to the elect in a special way, not from human free choice applying Christ’s death and merits to itself as chance may have it.

Latin

Quod Pelagianum sit, fructum mortis Christi, id est, vitam aeternam, a speciali intentione Dei ad specialem operationem liberi arbitrii transferre, patet ex Prosperi Epistola ad Augustinum. Patet etiam ex Hilarii ad eundem Augustinum Epistola, ubi Reliquiae Pelagianorum in morte Christi vitam aeternam sic omnibus propositam & expositam opinantur, ut singulare aliquod sive speciale propositum Dei de salvandis electis per hanc mortem Christi prorsus pernegent, & totum hoc discrimen servatorum per mortem Christi & non-servatorum ad humanas voluntates revocent. Jam & contra, orthodoxos speciale & arcanum propositum agnovisse in Deo acceptante sacrificium mortis Christi, Christoque illud offerente, de applicatione ejusdem efficaci & fructuosa ad certas personas, non minus clarum est ex libris Augustini De Praedestinatione sanctorum, De Bono perseverantiae, aliisque contra Pelagianos & Semipelagianos conscriptis, in quibus haec, de speciali voluntate salvandi electos per Christum, si non unica, primaria tamen conclusio est. De Prospero & Fulgentio idem dici potest, qui passim asserunt efficacem salutis consecutionem in Christo ab efficaci & speciali voluntate Divina Christum electis speciali modo destinante, non a libero hominum arbitrio Christi mortem ac merita sibi, prout contigerit, applicante.

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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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