Two Dissertations · §201 · John Davenant

Cap. 1 vocabulary: Electio — Scripture senses (nation / office)

2. Let us now explain the three words that will keep returning through the whole dispute ahead. First is Election. Scripture uses that word in more than one way. Sometimes it means setting a people apart to share the word and the ordinary means by which people are led to salvation. So God is said to have chosen the Jewish nation and passed by the other nations. "The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples," and so on (Deuteronomy 7:6). Sometimes the same word means setting a particular person apart for an office in the state or in the church. So God is said to have chosen Saul as king of the Jews: "See whom the Lord has chosen" (1 Samuel 10:24); and Christ chose the Twelve as apostles: "Did I not choose you, the twelve?" (John 6:70). Those elections are not our question now. Still, in them and in every case of the same kind, election always means taking someone — or some — out of a larger number for a special end the agent intends.

Latin

2. Jam veniamus ad explicationem illorum trium vocabulorum, quae subinde recurrent in tota nostra futura disputatione. Primum est Electio: Quod vocabulum in sacris Scripturis diversimode usurpatur. Nam aliquando designat separationem alicujus gentis, ad participationem communem verbi & aliorum mediorum, quibus homines ordinare perducuntur ad salutem. Sic Deus elegisse dicitur nationem Judaeorum, aliis gentibus praeteritis. Te elegit Jehovah Deus tuus, ut sis populus peculiaris prae omnibus populis, &c. Deut. vii.6. Aliquando vox haec denotat separationem certae alicujus personae ad munus aliquod sive officium vel in Republica vel in ecclesia. Sic Deus dicitur Saulum elegisse in regem Judaeorum: Videte quem elegerit Jehovah, 1 Sam. x.24. & Christus duodecim sic elegit in Apostolos: Nonne ego vos duodecim elegi, Johan. vi.70. De hisce electionibus non jam quaeritur: quamvis & in his ac caeteris ejusmodi, observare liceat electionem semper significare alicujus aut aliquorum e numero plurium separationem ad specialem finem ab agente intentum.

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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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