Two Dissertations · §325 · John Davenant

Cap. III Sol.: two guilty subjects — damning from crime does not prove electing from virtue

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Illustrate it so: take two men guilty of robbery or treason against their prince. The prince sees each as equally harmful — yet he wills to put one to death, and the other not only to free from punishment but to take into his household and heap with high honors. If someone argues The king condemned one from intuition of the crime (robber and traitor), therefore he elected the other to honors from intuition of innocence or virtue — that conclusion is false and ridiculous. So too are they deceived who from intuition of sin in the will to damn argue to intuition of merits in the will to free and elect to glory.

Latin

Illustremus hoc quod dictum est hujusmodi exemplo: Sumamus duos homines latrocinii, aut proditionis in Principem suum reos: Utrumque igitur ut ex aequo nocentem Princeps intuetur: vult tamen unum ex iis morte capitis afficere; vult alterum non modo a supplicio absolvere, sed in famulitium suum adsciscere, et honoribus eximiis cumulare. Hic siquis argutetur, Rex horum unum damnavit ex intuitu sceleris commissi, quia nempe et latro fuit et proditor, ergo alterum elegit ad honores ex intuitu innocentiae sive virtutis, quia scilicet bonus et justus erat; falso et ridicule concluserit. Perinde ergo et illi falluntur, qui ab intuitu peccati in voluntate damnandi arguunt ad intuitum meritorum in voluntate liberandi, et ad gloriam eligendi.

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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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