Two Dissertations · §323 · John Davenant

Cap. III Sol.: two acts of reprobation — praeterition vs praedamnation

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Sol. Recall what the Prolegomena said of reprobation's twofold act: a negative act — Passing-by or non-election — and an affirmative — praedamnation, or deputing to punishment. If reprobation means that prior act, we may grant sin in the reprobated subject, yet we must not think God from intuition of that sin decreed not to elect or not to free this particular person. He looked on the same sin in those he willed to elect and free.

Latin

Sol. Revocandum est in memoriam, quod de duplici actu reprobationis in Prolegomenis dictum fuit; nimirum, Reprobationem duos hosce actus involvere: unum negativum, quem appellare licet Praeteritionem sive non-electionem; alterum affirmativum, quem vocare possumus praedamnationem, sive Deputationem ad poenam: Respondeo igitur, si per reprobationem prior ille actus intelligatur, quamvis supponamus peccatum in subjecto reprobato, tamen non debemus cogitare Deum ex intuitu peccati hujus decrevisse apud se non eligere aut non liberare hanc personam singularem. Nam idem peccatum in illis etiam intuitus est, quos voluit eligere et liberare.

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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.

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