Two Dissertations · §347 · John Davenant

Cap. IV open: general decree urged as Scriptural — Resp. ad articulos, Hippolytus, Hague Remonstrants

Note well: that prior general decree, which names no one singularly to salvation, is what Arminius most urges and thrusts forward as the predestination Scripture recommends. So in his Response to the articles, art. 4: This decree (the general, indeterminate one) I say is the foundation of Christianity, salvation, and certainty of salvation; and Rom. 8, 10, 11 and Ephesians 1 treat of it. The same in his Letter to Hippolytus, where he skips the predestination by which God decreed to save certain singular persons and gift them faith — as a small matter, scarcely founded in Scripture. The Remonstrants at the Hague Conference, forgetting any particular decree, aim to prove this sole decree — God indiscriminately wills to save any who persevere in faith and pour wrath on all unbelievers — is the whole and entire decree of Predestination (p. 62).

Latin

Est autem observatu dignum, prius illud generale decretum, quod neminem singulariter ad salutem designat, urgeri tamen maxime ab Arminio, et obtrudi pro illa praedestinatione, quam sacra Scriptura nobis commendavit. Sic in Responsione sua ad articulos, artic. 4. Hoc decretum (loquitur de isto generali et indeterminato) dico esse fundamentum Christianismi, salutis, et certitudinis de salute; deque illo agi ad Rom. 8, 10, 11. et primo capite ad Ephesios. Idem plane docet in Epistola ad Hippolytum, in qua illam praedestinationem, qua Deus dicitur decrevisse singulares quasdam personas salvare et fide donare, quasi rem parvi momenti, et in sacris Scripturis minime fundatam, transilit. Remonstrantes autem in Collatione Hagiensi, plane immemores particularis cujuscunque decreti, eo dirigunt argumenta sua, ut probent hoc unicum decretum, quo Deus indiscriminatim statuit, velle se quoslibet in fide perseverantes servare, iram vero super omnibus incredulis effundere, esse totum et integrum decretum Praedestinationis, pag. 62.

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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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