Two Dissertations · §220 · John Davenant

Cap. 1 prol. IV: against Pelagian merits and scholastic merita congrua

When the Fathers argue against the Pelagians that grace is not given or withheld according to free choice's merits, they mean simply this: it is not given according to a condition of foresight regarding free choice's good or bad use.r bad use.r bad use. Had the Pelagians proved that, the Fathers would never have denied it was a true cause of the grace conferred. So too when our theologians contend against some Scholastics that God does not predestine people from foresight congruent merits, they mean that these so-called congruent merits are not antecedent distinguishing conditions by which everyone in whom they were foresight is elected and everyone in whom they were not is rejected. If the Scholastics ever prove such conditions, their case is finished — and we will freely admit that those conditions are causes of the divide between elect and reprobate, in the sense in which cause and merit are spoken of.

Latin

Nam quando contra Pelagianos disputant, gratiam non dari aut negari secundum merita liberi arbitrii, nihil aliud volunt, quam non dari secundum praevisam conditionem boni aut mali usus ejusdem liberi arbitrii. Si enim Pelagiani hoc evicissent, Patres nunquam negassent esse veram causam gratiae collatae. Sic etiam cum Theologi nostri contra Scholasticos nonnullos contendunt, Deum non praedestinare homines ex praevisis meritis congruis, nihil aliud volunt, quam haec quae appellantur merita congrua non esse conditiones antecedentes ac distinguentes, secundum quas eligantur omnes in quibus illae praevisae fuerant, rejiciantur omnes in quibus non fuerant. Nam si tales conditiones esse demonstraverint, rem confectam habent Scholastici, & nos ultro fatebimur esse causas discriminis electorum & reprobatorum, eo sensu quo causae & meriti vocabulum usurpatur.

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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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