Two Dissertations · §359 · John Davenant

Cap. IV Arg. 2 Sol: placere Deo = walk with God — without actual faith election would be temporal

Further, to please God is not one sense only. Paulinely it means doing works pleasing to God, or (from the original) walking with God. Mark how absurd it is that no one could ever be elected unless he first has all that our works need to please God. Without actual faith — and charity too — no one can please God that way, or walk with God as Enoch did. If this argument had force, all election would be temporal and would follow justification and sanctification.

Latin

Dein, verba illa, placere Deo, non uno modo accipi possunt. Sensu Paulino nihil aliud indicant, quam facere opera Deo placentia, vel (ut ex originali textu notavimus) ambulare cum Deo. Jam attendite quam absonum sit, neminem potuisse unquam a Deo eligi, nisi prius ea omnia habeat sine quibus opera nostra Deo placere non possunt. Profecto absque fide actuali, addo etiam, et charitate, nemo potest hoc modo placere Deo, (aut quod Enochus fecit) cum Deo ambulare. Si ulla vis inesset huic argumento, electio omnis esset temporalis, et justificationem ac sanctificationem sequeretur.

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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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