Two Dissertations · §231 · John Davenant

Cap. II: fourth cause (cruelty charge); leave old Scholastics — Pontificii & Arminians next

A last motive for many who will admit no election except one resting on foresight of some act free choice can elicit: they took as a necessary postulate what is utterly false — that God would be cruel unless he put it in every person's power to recover by himself the salvation lost in Adam. Leave the old Pelagians and Scholastics. Engage those who disturb the Church in our age by dressing old errors in new formulas. First certain Papal doctors, then the Arminians: both refuse any election to salvation that does not rest on foresight of human acts elicited from free choice, grace having gone before.

Latin

Postrema causa, qua moti sunt quamplurimi ut nullam admitterent electionem, nisi praescientia nixam alicujus actus eliciendi ex potestate liberi arbitrii, hac mihi fuisse videtur, Quod tanquam necessarium postulatum praesumpserunt, quod est fallissimum, scilicet, Deum crudelem fore, nisi in cujusvis hominis potestate constituat ut salutem possit, quam in Adamo emisit, per seipsum recuperare. Sed missis veteribus Pelagianis & Scholasticis, congrediamur cum illis qui nostro hoc seculo perturbant Ecclesiam, dum veteres errores interpolare & sub novis verborum formulis obtrudere conantur. Atque primo agemus contra Pontificios quosdam, dein contra Arminianos: qui in hoc consentiunt, quod electionem nullam ad salutem admittunt nisi nixam praescientia actuum humanorum eliciendorum, ex libero arbitrio per gratiam praevento.

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About this text

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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