Two Dissertations · §453 · John Davenant

Cap. VI Arg. 4: media answer the end — efficacious means given elect before foresight of faith

Means answer the end they are meant to secure. In this vocation God gives the elect — and only the elect — means he knows will be infallibly efficacious, and gives them so that they will be, and that before any foresight of their faith or conversion. That such means are prepared for some from mere good pleasure, not foresighted faith, is plain: faith and penitence follow from such calling as effect from cause. Had the same means been so prepared and given even to the most hardened, they too would have believed and turned.

Latin

Mediorum enim administratio respondet intentioni finis per eadem media obtinendi. Deus in hac vocatione electis, ac solis electis, administrat media quae novit fore infallibiliter efficacia, atque eo animo administrat, ut sint infallibiliter efficacia, idque ante omnem praevisionem fidei et conversionis in iisdem. Talia media preparari quibusdam ex mero Dei beneplacito, et non ex praevisa eorum fide, clarum est; quia infallibilis productio fidei et paenitentiae ex tali vocatione, tanquam effectus ex causa, consequitur. Si enim talia media hominibus quantumvis obduratis fuissent praeparata ac taliter administrata, illi etiam credidissent ac conversi fuissent.

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About this text

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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