Two Dissertations · §321 · John Davenant

Cap. III Sol. Rat. 10 close: not Predestinati — works profit; Father prepares repentance

Click or tap any sentence to jump there. The side buttons skip a paragraph.

So the Predestinarian heresy is nothing to us — we teach outright that works of piety profit toward obtaining glory, and that crimes block even the predestinated so that, unless cast off by repentance and newness of life, they cannot reach the kingdom of glory. Yet the same heavenly Father who gratuitously destined them glory has also infallibly prepared for them that repentance and newness of life.

Latin

Praedestinatorum igitur haeresis nihil ad nos, qui pleno ore docemus opera pietatis prodesse ad consecutionem gloriae; Flagitia etiam praedestinatis ipsis ita obstare, ut nisi per poenitentiam et vitae novitatem abjicerentur, non possent ad regnum gloriae pervenire. Sed idem caelestis Pater, qui gratuito illis gloriam destinavit, hanc poenitentiam et vitae novitatem infallibiliter etiam iisdem praeparavit.

Report a mistake in this passage

About this text

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.

Printed text used

Also checked PDF of the 1650 (Latin · print facsimile)
Also checked DjVu machine-read text of the 1650 (Latin)

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.

Report a mistake