Two Dissertations · §188 · John Davenant

Cap. 7 Contra Sol. 2: God-side application; Scotus on joining the unjoined

To meet the objection, take Ephesians 1:3 as foundation: God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ — that is, every saving good that comes down from God is given through Christ and for his merits. Saving faith, proper to the elect, ranks among the chief spiritual blessings; so it is granted, for Christ's merits, to all who in fact receive it. When theologians say faith is the instrument by which Christ's merits are applied to us, they mean application on the human side: the elect cannot apply those merits to themselves for any spiritual benefit unless faith is already presupposed in them. But if we view application or imputation from God's side alone, God can and does apply — impute and communicate — Christ's merits to people so that, with regard to those merits, he gives spiritual goods even while they still count as ungodly and unbelieving. Faith, when first given, is not given to a believer but to an unbeliever; yet it is given to the elect for the Mediator's merits. So we must confess: no elect person could, by believing, apply Christ's merits to himself for eternal life's fruit unless God, from special mercy and for that merit of Christ, had first infused the faith by which they would believe. That is the special application of Christ's merits which, from Christ's special will in offering himself and the Father's in accepting the sacrifice, we say belongs to the elect by a peculiar privilege. Scotus saw this in a saying worth marking: the chief thing in Christ's merit was that he merited the joining of the unjoined (lib. 3, dist. 19, unique q., p. 75) — as if to say the main force of those merits is that some from among unbelievers should become believers and, joined to Christ by faith, obtain eternal life. That special ordination and application of Christ's merits hangs wholly on God's good pleasure, not on human choice.

Latin

Ut huic objectioni occurratur, fundamenti loco ponendum est illud Apostoli, Ephes. i. 3. Benedixit nobis Deus omni benedictione spirituali in Christo. Id est, Quicquid boni salutiferi ad nos a Deo descendit, id nobis per Christum & propter merita Christi donatur. Cum igitur ipsa fides salutifera, quae propria est electorum, sit inter praecipuas spirituales benedictiones reponenda, propter merita Christi illam donari iis omnibus, quibus de facto donatur, in confesso est. Quod igitur vulgo dicunt Theologi, fidem esse illud instrumentum, quo mediante merita Christi nobis applicantur, id intelligendum est de applicatione ex parte hominum considerata: Ipsi enim electi non possunt sibi applicare merita Christi ad perceptionem beneficiorum quorumcunque spiritualium, nisi fide in iis praesupposita. At si applicationem aut imputationem ex parte solius Dei consideremus, tum dicendum est, Deum & posse & solere applicare, id est, imputare & communicare, hominibus merita Christi, ita ut intuitu horum meritorum det illis bona spiritualia, etiam cum impii & infideles censeantur. Fides enim ipsa, cum primum datur, non fideli datur, sed infideli: datur autem electis propter merita Mediatoris. Necesse est ergo ut fateamur, neminem ex electis potuisse credendo sibi applicare merita Christi ad fructum vitae aeternae, nisi Deus ex speciali misericordia, propter hoc meritum Christi, fidem qua crederent illis prius infudisset. Atque haec est illa specialis applicatio meritorum Christi quam ex speciali voluntate Christi seipsum offerentis, Deique Patris hoc sacrificium acceptantis, ad electos peculiari quodam privilegio pertinere affirmamus. Scotus huc respexit, illo dicto observatione dignissimo, Haec fuit potissimum in merito Christi, quod meruit non-conjunctos conjungi, lib. 3. dist. 19. qu. unica, pag. 75. Quod perinde est ac si dixisset, praecipuam efficaciam meritorum Christi in eo sitam, quod meruit ut quidam ex infidelibus reapse fierent fideles, Christoque per fidem conjuncti vitam aeternam consequerentur. Haec est illa specialis ordinatio meritorum Christi, atque applicatio, quae tota pendet ex Dei beneplacito, non ex hominum arbitrio.

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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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