Two Dissertations · §403 · John Davenant

Cap. V Obj. 1 Sol: cannot love unless reconciled — slippery and false; loves to gift faith

What they attach — that God cannot so love anyone unto salvation unless reconciled, and cannot be reconciled to anyone except from antecedent foresight of his faith — is very slippery, indeed plainly false. By the love latent in the election decree, God loves one not yet reconciled so far as to appoint him to be reconciled; loves one not yet faithful so far as to decree him gifted with faith — though not as he loves sons already adopted, reconciled, and believing.

Latin

Quae attexuntur, scilicet, Deum non posse praedicto modo ad salutem amare quenquam nisi reconciliatum; reconciliari autem non posse cuiquam nisi ex antecedanea fidei ejus praevisione, sunt valde lubrica, imo manifeste falsa. Nam hoc amore, qui in electionis decreto latere intelligitur, Deus amat nondum reconciliatum eatenus ut illum sibi reconciliandum statuat; amat nondum fidelem, eatenus ut eum fide donandum decernat: quamvis non eo modo amet quo filios suos jam adoptatos, reconciliatos et credentes.

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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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