Two Dissertations · §435 · John Davenant

Cap. VI open: Orthodox position set out — election from mere divine good pleasure

Cap. VI. The orthodox position is set out and confirmed. You have heard the adversaries' arguments for an election they fetch from an antecedent act of the human will. It remains to bring ours forward — showing that election or predestination of singular persons to the infallible attainment of eternal life flows from the mere good pleasure of God's mercy.

Latin

Cap. VI. Orthodoxa sententia exponitur et confirmatur. Accepistis adversariorum argumenta pro illa electione, quam ex antecedaneo voluntatis humanae actu arcessunt. Restat ut nostra jam in medium proferantur, quae electionem sive praedestinationem singularium personarum ad infallibilem consecutionem vitae aeternae, ex mero Dei misericordiae beneplacito dimanare ostendent.

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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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