Two Dissertations · §445 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 2 close: faith-bearing grace given by freest will — so predestination unbound to prior free-choice acts

So this special efficacious grace that brings forth faith and conversion does not prerequire an antecedent condition of our faith — it is given to some and not to others by the freest will of the Giver. Plainly then predestination itself, the cause of such grace prepared and gifted, is not bound to any antecedent acts of human choice, but is constituted in God's free good pleasure — as stated in Rom. 9:15Rom. 9:15Rom. 9:15, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.

Latin

Quandoquidem igitur haec specialis et efficax gratia quae fidem parit, et conversionem, non praerequirit antecedaneam fidei nostrae conditionem, sed datur quibusdam, aliis non datur, pro liberrima dantis aut non-dantis voluntate; manifestum est ipsam praedestinationem, quae est causa talis gratiae praeparatae et donatae, non esse alligatam actibus ullis antecedaneis humani arbitrii, sed constitutam in gratuito beneplacito ipsius Dei, juxta illud Apostoli, Miserebor cujus misertus fuero, Rom. ix. 15.

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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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