Two Dissertations · §307 · John Davenant

Cap. III Rat. 8: if not from foresight, majority would be elect — few are saved

Rat. 8. Without foresight of our works, they argue, a God good by nature — whose mercy is over all his works — would have marked at least most of humankind for life. Yet few are saved. So predestination must track foresight of works, that is of free choice used well or badly.

Latin

Rat. 8. Si Deus absque operum nostrorum praescientia praedestinaret, majorem saltem partem hominum praedestinasset ad vitam, cum sit natura bonus, et misericordia ejus sit super omnia opera ejus: At pauci sunt qui salvantur: Ergo non praedestinat Deus nisi secundum praevisionem operum sive boni aut mali usus liberi arbitrii.

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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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