Two Dissertations · §292 · John Davenant

Cap. III Sol. Rat. 4 close: gratuitous election stands; crown as prize; foresight after

and finally: people can be elected gratuitously to eternal life even when the crown of eternal life is decreed to be set on the elect as the prize of a life lived laudably and justly. God’s will about the way of bringing them to that prize through holy works does not overturn gratuitous, merciful election to eternal life from the elector’s primary purpose and mere good pleasure. When God decrees to bring someone to glory through such works, the primary decree to give glory does not rise from foresight of those works — rather, from that decree flows the will to give efficacious grace for doing such works of justice. So foresight of them is after election.

Latin

et illud denique respondeamus, Eligi posse homines gratuito ad vitam aeternam, quamvis corona vitae aeternae decernatur electis imponenda, ut premium vitae laudabiliter justeque transactae. Nam voluntas Dei de modo perducendi ad premium per opera sanctitatis, non evertit gratuitam et misericordem electionem ad vitam aeternam ex proposito primario et beneplacito mero eligentis. Quando enim Deus decernit perducere aliquem ad gloriam per talia opera, primarium decretum dandi gloriam non oritur ex praevisione illorum operum, sed ex hoc decreto fluit voluntas dandi gratiam efficacem ad talia opera justitiae facienda. Illorum igitur praevisio electione posterior.

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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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