Two Dissertations · §354 · John Davenant

Cap. IV Arg. 1 Sol: whole saving will includes vocation according to purpose — true praedestinans will

For God's whole will about men's salvation is not contained in Whoever believes will have eternal life. Scripture further opens that to certain ones — of whom from mere good pleasure he wills to have mercy before others — he wills to gift vocation according to purpose; from that vocation repentance, faith, sanctification, and finally glorification, all infallibly. That is the true, properly predestinating will, opened in the Gospel as to the thing, though individuals are not there named. So much for the Major.

Latin

Tota siquidem Dei voluntas de salute hominum non continetur tali decreto, Qui crediderit habebit vitam aeternam. Nam in sacris Scripturis Deus insuper patefecit, se quibusdam, quorum ex mero beneplacito vult prae aliis misereri, velle donare vocationem secundum propositum; ex tali vocatione poenitentiam, fidem, sanctificationem, et demum glorificationem, atque haec omnia infallibiliter. Haec voluntas Dei est vera et proprie voluntas praedestinans, estque in Evangelio patefacta quoad rem, quamvis individua quoad nomen non inibi exprimantur. Haec de Majore.

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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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