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Cap. III Rat. 4: optimum modus — glory by merits foresight as crown of justice
Rat. 4. It is fair to hold that God marks people out for glory in the best way. But that best way, they say, is to do it from foresight of merits — for so the decree is cast as a crown of justice.
Latin Rat. 4. Aequum est ut statuamus Deum optimo modo homines ad gloriam designare: Sed optimus modus est ex praevisione meritorum id facere: sic enim decernitur tanquam corona Justitiae.
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About this text Davenant wrote in the early seventeenth century as Lady Margaret Professor at Cambridge and Bishop of Salisbury; he was a British delegate at Dort. This is not a patristic work.
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.
Date 1572–1641 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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We have not yet re-checked this work against its source. We made this study translation with AI help. No scholar has yet certified it as faithful and complete. Open Latin on any section, or the Latin source link, to see the source text. It is not a critical edition.
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