Two Dissertations · §185 · John Davenant

Cap. 7 Contra open: Obj. 1 — mercy vs justice in elect application

Against all we have argued about Christ's special dying intention toward the elect, and about the saving application of his death that hangs on and flows from that intention, objections can be raised. 1. If Christ's offering carries an intention limited to the elect, and from it they receive efficacious application and sure salvation, then we seem to ground their justification and salvation less in God's good pleasure and special mercy than in a kind of justice. Ask why Peter rather than Judas received efficacious grace and salvation from Christ's death, and on our view the answer must be: because by special intention and application of his merits Christ merited for Peter what he refused to merit for Judas. Yet what comes from Christ's merits peculiarly applied to one person seems to come not from bare mercy of Divine good pleasure, but from justice — for it is just that what Christ merited for these or those persons be specially assigned to them. That seems to clash with the Apostle, who traces the grace and sure salvation of the predestined to God's pure grace alone.

Latin

Contra haec omnia quae disputavimus de speciali intentione Christi morientis relata & restricta ad electos, & de salutifera applicatione mortis Christi ab eadem intentione dependente & dimanante, objici possunt. 1. Si in oblatione Christi detur talis intentio ad electos limitata, unde pro illis obtineatur efficacitas applicationis, & infallibilitas salutis, tum videmur illorum justificationem & salutem non tam ad eudokian, & specialem Dei misericordiam, quam ad rationem quandam justitiae revocare. Nam si quaeratur cur Petrus potius quam Judas gratiam efficacem & salutem ex merito mortis Christi acceperit, juxta nostram sententiam respondendum erit, Quia Christus speciali intentione & applicatione meritorum suorum id nomine Petri promeruit, quod pro Juda mereri noluit. Quod autem datur ex meritis Christi peculiariter applicatis huic personae, non videtur dari ex sola misericordia beneplaciti Divini, sed potius ex justitia: quia justum est ut quod Christus hisce aut illis personis promeruit, eisdem specialiter assignetur. Hoc autem videtur contravenire Apostolo, qui gratiam & salutem infallibilem praedestinatorum a pura Dei gratia arcessit.

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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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