Two Dissertations · §236 · John Davenant

Cap. II Arg. 2: praescientia loci (Rom. 8:29–30 / 11:2 / 1 Pet. 1:2)

Second: they press the places where election or predestination to glory is joined in so many words with foreknowledge — Rom. 8:29–30 ("Whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to his Son's image…"); Rom. 11:2 ("God has not cast off his people whom he foreknew"); 1 Pet. 1:2 ("elect strangers according to the Father's foreknowledge, unto sanctification of the Spirit…"). From these they infer that God elected to glory those he foreknew would be conformed to the Son's image — holy and good — so that foresight of future goodness or holiness was the cause of election to glory.

Latin

Secundo, urgentur illa loca in quibus electio sive praedestinatio ad gloriam expressis verbis conjungitur cum praescientia. Ut Rom. viii. 29, 30. Quos praescivit, eos & praedestinavit ut conformes fiant imagini Filii sui, &c. Et Rom. xi. 2. Non repulit Deus plebem suam quam praescivit. Et 1. Pet. i. 2. Electis advenis secundum praescientiam Dei Patris in sanctificationem spiritus, &c. Ex hisce & hujusmodi locis inferunt adversarii, Deum eos ad gloriam elegisse, quos praescivit futuros conformes imagini Filii sui, id est, sanctos & bonos; ita ut haec praescientia futurae bonitatis sive sanctitatis fuerit causa electionis ad gloriam.

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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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