Two Dissertations · §339 · John Davenant

Cap. III Sol. Rat. 14: distinguish electing act from eternal life elected — dispositive vs motive

Sol. To solve this rightly, distinguish God's act of electing from the thing he elects to, that is, eternal life itself. A thing can work as a disposing cause toward producing it that could not have been a motive cause of the elector's intention. We do not deny that good works, or a holy and pious life, work that way toward attaining eternal life, and that God from eternity looked on the elect's holy life as preceding their entrance into the heavenly kingdom.

Latin

Sol. Ut hoc argumentum recte solvatur, distinguendum est inter ipsam actionem Dei eligentis ad vitam aeternam, et ipsam rem ad quam eligit, hoc est, ipsam vitam aeternam. Potest enim habere vim causae dispositivae quoad productionem rei, quod nullam habuit vim causae motivae quoad intentionem eligentis. Non imus inficias, bona opera, sive vitam sanctam et piam, isto modo operari ad consecutionem vitae aeternae, atque Deum ab aeterno intuitum fuisse hanc electorum sanctam vitam, tanquam praecedaneam ad illorum introitum in regnum caeleste.

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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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