Two Dissertations · §401 · John Davenant

Cap. V open + Obj. 1: election is love unto salvation — therefore from foresight of faith

Cap. V. Certain Arminian objections the Collocutors left out are set out and answered. Arminius has further arguments not used at the Hague Conference; we bring those in too and treat them one by one — many from his Examination of Perkinsian Predestination, some elsewhere. Obj. 1. Election is love unto salvation. God cannot love a sinner unto salvation unless reconciled to him. But God is reconciled only to one he looks on as believing in Christ. Therefore God elects no one except from an antecedent intuition of faith.

Latin

Cap. V. Objectiones quaedam Arminianae a Collocutoribus omissae ponuntur et dissolvuntur. Alia apud Arminium occurrunt nonnulla alia argumenta, quae in Collatione Hagiensi non adhibentur; nos ea quoque in medium afferemus, et sigillatim pertractabimus. Ejus generis quamplurima afferuntur in Examine Praedestinationis Perkinsianae; nonnulla alibi: quae uti sese nobis offerent discutiemus. Obj. 1. Electio est amor ad salutem: Deus non potest peccatorem amare ad salutem nisi ipsi sit reconciliatus: Non autem reconciliatur Deus nisi ei quem ut credentem in Christum intuetur: Ergo Deus neminem eligit nisi ex antecedaneo fidei intuitu.

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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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