Two Dissertations · §334 · John Davenant

Cap. III Sol. Rat. 13: Augustine dissolves — election excites industry; despair is the impious' vice

Sol. Augustine dissolves all this in the places just cited. Still I answer: the doctrine of election excites and kindles industry of living well in all the pious. If the impious and profane take from it occasion of torpor or despair, that is their vice and innate perversity — not the doctrine's.

Latin

Sol. Haec omnia dissolvuntur ab Augustino in locis modo citatis; Respondeo tamen, doctrinam electionis in piis omnibus excitare, et incendere industriam bene vivendi. Quod si impii et profani inde occasionem torporis aut desperationis accipiant, id fieri illorum vitio et innata perversitate, non ipsius doctrinae.

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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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