Two Dissertations · §374 · John Davenant

Cap. IV Arg. 5 Sol: Major false — temporal adoption needs faith; eternal destinatio need not

Sol. That Major fails. Yes, finished temporal adoption carries faith with it — beforehand as a condition, or at least together with adoption in the same moment — so you cannot treat someone as actually adopted without treating him as faithful. But destination unto adoption in God's mind before the world's foundations can and must be thought without treating our faith as an antecedent condition.

Latin

Sol. Major propositio falsa est. Nam quamvis perfecta adoptio temporalis involvat fidem, ut conditionem antecedentem, vel saltem in ipso momento adoptionis concurrentem; ac proinde nemo considerari possit ut actu adoptatus, qui non simul consideretur ut fidelis: tamen adoptio, vel destinatio εἰς υἱοθεσίαν in mente Divina ante jacta mundi fundamenta considerari et potest, et debet, absque consideratione fidei in nobis tanquam conditionis antecedaneae.

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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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