Two Dissertations · §378 · John Davenant

Cap. IV Arg. 5 Sol cont: faith may accompany temporal adoption — not eternal destinatio; chain from election

Faith may precede or at least go with adoption finished in the elect themselves — but it cannot (even on our way of thinking) precede the adoption God from eternity decreed and destined for certain persons in his electing mind. Efficacious vocation according to purpose precedes saving faith; predestination or election to glory precedes that vocation. So none are considered or foreseen as faithful except from the antecedent predestination decree — because efficacious vocation, true faith, and real adoption flow from it.

Latin

Praecedat fides, aut comitetur saltem adoptionem in ipsis electis peractam: at non potest (vel secundum nostrum considerandi modum) praecedere adoptionem in mente Dei eligentis ab aeterno certis personis decretam et destinatam. Nam fidem salutiferam praecedit vocatio efficax, vel secundum propositum; talem vocationem antecedit praedestinatio sive electio ad gloriam: unde clarum est, non considerari ullos aut praevideri tanquam fideles nisi ex antecedente praedestinationis decreto, quia efficax vocatio, vera fides, et realis adoptio inde dimanat.

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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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