Two Dissertations · §418 · John Davenant

Cap. V Obj. 5: predestination without foresight of faith fights the nature and titles of eternal life

Obj. 5. Predestination supposed without foresight of faith fights the nature of eternal life and the titles Scripture gives it: inheritance of sons (but only believers are), wage, reward, crown of justice. Therefore it is destined to no one apart from all consideration and intuition of faith and obedience

Latin

Obj. 5. Praedestinatio quae supponitur facta non ex praevisione fidei, pugnat cum natura vitae aeternae, et titulis quibus illa in Scripturis insignitur: Vocatur haereditas filiorum (at soli credentes sunt), merces, praemium, corona justitiae: Ergo non destinatur cuiquam citra omnem considerationem et intuitum fidei et obedientiae.

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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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