Two Dissertations · §411 · John Davenant

Cap. V Obj. 3 Sol: Major ambiguous — reject prior existence-as-faithful; grant foresight of what God will make

Sol. The Major is highly ambiguous. If it means every one predestinated to life already existed in God's intuition, before the predestination decree, as he will be in receiving eternal life — reject it outright. But if it means: when God destinates the elect to life, he at once from eternity looks ahead and sees of what sort he will make them before leading them to life, and contemplates them as such to be brought into possession of eternal life — that is most true, and cannot be denied unless one denies that God foreknows what he himself will do.

Latin

Sol. Major multum in se habet ambiguitatis. Nam si eo sensu capiatur, quasi omnis ad vitam praedestinatus, antecedenter ad hoc decretum praedestinationis, talis existeret in intuitu Divino, qualis futurus est in ipsa acceptione vitae aeternae, prorsus rejicienda est. Si vero haec sit illius propositionis mens, Quando Deus electos ad vitam destinat, simul ab aeterno prospicit, et intuetur quales sit eos effecturus, antequam ad vitam perducat, eosdemque, ut tales, in vitae aeternae possessionem introducendos contempletur, id quidem verissimum est, nec negari potest, nisi quis negare velit Deum praescire quae ipse est facturus.

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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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