Two Dissertations · §415 · John Davenant

Cap. V Obj. 4: if predestination without foresight of faith, then save without satisfaction of justice

Obj. 4. If God predestined some to life without knowledge of their future faith, then he would also will to save them without satisfaction of his justice — loving them more than his own justice. But those are false. Therefore so is what follows from them: that God predestinates anyone before foresight of faith, which applies Christ's satisfaction to particular persons unto salvation.

Latin

Obj. 4. Si Deus praedestinaret quosdam ad vitam absque intuitu fidei antecedaneae, tum tales etiam servare vellet absque justitiae suae satisfactione; cum etiam tales magis diligeret, quam propriam suam justitiam: At haec falsa sunt: Ergo et illud unde consequuntur, scilicet, Deum praedestinare quenquam ante praevisionem fidei, quae satisfactionem Christi particularibus personis applicat ad salutem.

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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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