Two Dissertations · §172 · John Davenant

Cap. 7 Scholastici open: Sed missis — Lombard sufficienter/efficaciter

Setting the older writers aside, we come down to the Scholastics and modern Romanists. They defend Christ as having died for all, yet they also grant he died for the elect alone with a special intention to apply that death to them so that eternal life follows without fail. 1. Start with Peter Lombard, master of the Scholastics: Christ offered himself on the cross's altar for all as to the price's sufficiency, but for the elect only as to efficacy, because he effects salvation only for the predestined (Sentences 3, dist. 20, letter c))). The reason he gives for calling Christ's death efficacious for the elect alone is worth marking. He does not say what Pelagians and Arminians would say — that only those were foreseen who, stirred by grace in free choice, would apply Christ to themselves — but that in them alone, by the kindness of special mercy, he wrought salvation. What his death wrought in the elect he surely decreed to work. That is the special intention under which we say Christ's death is related and ordained to the elect alone.

Latin

Sed missis antiquioribus, ad Scholasticos & modernos Pontificios descendamus: Qui sic defendunt Christum pro omnibus mortuum, ut interim agnoscant pro Electis solis mortuum cum speciali intentione mortem suam eisdem applicandi ad infallibilem consecutionem vitae aeternae. 1. Ordiamur a Magistro Scholasticorum Petro Lombardo; Christus se in ara crucis obtulit pro omnibus, quantum ad pretii sufficientiam; sed pro electis tantum, quantum ad efficaciam, quia praedestinatis tantum salutem efficit, lib. 3. dist. 20 litt. c. Ratio quam subnectit Magister, cur Christus pro solis electis mortuus dicatur quantum ad efficaciam, est observatione dignissima. Non enim illam affert quam Pelagiani & Arminiani attulissent, scilicet quod illi tantum praevidebantur, pro libertate arbitrii sui per gratiam excitati, ut Christum sibi applicaturi, sed quod in illis tantum pro benignitate specialis suae misericordiae salutem effecerit. Quod autem morte sua in Electis effecit, proculdubio efficere decrevit. Atque haec est illa specialis intentio sub qua mortem Christi ad solos electos relatam, & ordinatam profitemur.

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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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