Two Dissertations · §349 · John Davenant

Cap. IV Arg. 1: gospel-revealed will to save perseverers is the whole predestination decree

Arg. 1. God's will concerning men's salvation and ruin, revealed in the Gospel, is the whole entire decree of predestination. To will to save those persevering in faith, and to leave wrath on the unbelieving and impenitent, is that gospel-revealed will. Therefore to will to save perseverers in faith and leave wrath on unbelievers is the whole and entire decree of predestination. They say the major is self-evident and needs no proof; the minor is expressly founded in John 3:36 — Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son will not see life, but God's wrath remains on him — and John 6:40 — This is the will of him who sent me, that whoever sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life.

Latin

Arg. 1. Voluntas Dei de salute et exitio hominum in Evangelio patefacta, est totum integrum decretum praedestinationis: Perseverantes in fide velle servare, iram vero super incredulis et impoenitentibus velle relinquere, est voluntas Dei de salute et exitio hominum in Evangelio patefacta: Ergo perseverantes in fide velle servare, iram vero super incredulis relinquere, est totum et integrum decretum praedestinationis. Majorem dicunt esse per se manifestam, nec probatione indigere; Minorem in hisce Scripturae locis expresse fundatam Joh. iii. 36, Qui credit in Filium, habet vitam aeternam; qui vero Filio non obtemperat, non videbit vitam, sed ira Dei manet super ipsum. Et Joh. vi. 40, Haec est voluntas ejus qui misit me, ut quisquis videt Filium, et credit in eum, habeat vitam aeternam.

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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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