Two Dissertations · §393 · John Davenant

Cap. IV Arg. 8 Sol: Remonstrant syllogism on foresight-robes is mere trifles; apply to elect

Run the Remonstrants' pattern and its vanity shows at once: whom and as such this king crowned in time, he decreed from the start to crown as such; but in time he crowns one beautifully clothed and purged of squalor as such; therefore from the start he decreed to adopt and crown one beautifully clothed as such — i.e. from foresight of fair garments. Mere trifles. The first will to adopt and crown did not spring from foresight of garments; crowning itself required those garments and that prior purging, by the king's decree ordering external execution. Apply it: God from mere good pleasure wills to adopt Peter, Paul, or any elect corrupt in old Adam's mass and wasting in sin, and gift eternal life — yet also decrees, and publishes in the Gospel, that he wills him first purified by faith and cleansed from sin's filth before entering the kingdom.

Latin

Fiat ergo syllogismus ad exemplar propositum a Remonstrantibus, et vanitas ejus illico patebit: Ille et talis quem et qualem hic Rex in tempore coronavit, illum et talem ab initio coronare decrevit: Sed pulchre vestitum et a squalore suo purgatum, qua talem, in tempore coronat: Ergo ab initio decrevit pulchre vestitum, qua talem, hoc est, ex praevisa conditione pulchrorum vestimentorum, adoptare et coronare. Nugae merae. Non enim prima voluntas adoptandi et coronandi originem cepit ab antecedanea consideratione, aut praevisa conditione pulchrorum vestimentorum; sed ipsa actio coronandi requirebat haec vestimenta et hanc purgationem antecedaneam, idque ex decreto Regis externam rei exsecutionem ordinante. Accommodemus haec praesenti instituto. Deus Petrum, Paulum, vel quemlibet electum in massa veteris Adami corruptum et peccato tabidum, ex beneplacito mero voluntatis suae vult adoptare, et aeterna vita donare: Sed decernit etiam, et in Evangelio hoc decretum promulgat, velle se ut fide prius purificetur, et a sordibus peccatorum mundetur, quam in possessionem regni introducatur.

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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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