Two Dissertations · §256 · John Davenant

Cap. II Sol. Arg. 5 close: Augustine / Gregory / Aquinas — all = kinds, not foresight-cooperation

Last: if someone still insists Paul's words mean God's efficacious will, he will never get free unless he reads the place as Augustine, Gregory, and the scholastics long did. Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace 14: "God wills all men to be saved" — understand all the predestined, because every kind of human being is among them. Gregory: he wills all men to be saved because from every kind of people he elects those he draws to the joy of eternal salvation (on 1 Kings, book 5, ch. 4). Aquinas on the same words: the distribution is for the kinds of individuals, not for the individuals of the kinds. So this text does not prove that by the will of good pleasure God wills the salvation of every single person — and far less that he elects people to salvation from foresight of the future cooperation by which they would fit themselves to that will.

Latin

Postremo, si quis obstinate contendat verba Apostoli de efficaci voluntate Dei esse intelligenda, is nunquam se expediet, si aliter locum capiat quam ab Augustino, Gregorio & Scholasticis olim fuit explicatus. Sic Augustinus de corrept. & grat. cap. 14. Deus vult omnes homines salvos fieri, ut intelligantur omnes praedestinati, quia omne genus hominum est in iis. Et Gregorius, Omnes homines vult salvos fieri, quia ex omni hominum genere eligit, quos ad gaudium aeternae salutis trahit. In 1. Reg. lib. 5. cap. 4. Aquinas denique in Commentariis ad haec ipsa verba, Est distributio pro generibus singulorum, non pro singulis generum. Quandoquidem ergo hic locus non probat Deum voluntate beneplaciti velle salutem omnium & singulorum, multo minus probat Deum eligere homines ad salutem ex praescientia futurae cooperationis, qua se accommodent huic voluntati Dei.

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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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